Zitlala, Mexico—At the end of a rocky mountain road lined with pretty fields of corn, marigolds and palm trees, a Mexican drug gang turned a picturesque hill into a gruesome cemetery.
Between Tuesday and Thursday, investigators pulled 32 bodies from 17 shallow graves hidden among small trees and rocks in the southern state of Guerrero. They also found nine heads stored in coolers.
Alejandro Toriz, coordinator of the health department’s morgue in Chilpancingo, said the human remains were in various states of decomposition.
Many of the victims found in the pits had been strangled, suffocated, struck violently in the head or their throats were slit, Toriz said. Bloods stains and bullet casings found at the site suggest some were executed on the hill.
The victims included 29 men and three women.
Forensic experts were trying to determine whether the nine heads, which were still “fresh,” belonged to nine bodies that were dumped on a roadside near the town of Tixtla last Sunday, he said.
The grim discovery near the village of Pochahuizco, in the municipality of Zitlala, put another dark spotlight on the brutal violence perpetrated by drug gangs battling for supremacy in Guerrero.
For families of scores of people who have disappeared in the area in recent years, it revived fears that their loved ones may have been killed.
Half a dozen people flocked to the morgue at the state capital, Chilpancingo, on Friday, only to be told it would take a few days to identify the victims.
“I felt bad, I felt nervous. I don’t want to find my husband here. I want to find him alive,” said Beatriz Zapoteco, 44, with tears running down her cheeks after leaving the morgue without an answer.
On January 5, around seven masked men with assault rifles burst into her home and snatched her husband, Santiago Tixteco, a former town councilman who defended the rights of local farmers.
“That day was as if the world collapsed around me when they kidnapped my husband,” said Zapoteco, who doesn’t know who took her husband, or why.
Authorities say the Ardillos drug gang and rival Los Rojos have been battling for control of opium poppy production in the region while both terrorize the population through murders, kidnappings and extortion.
The Rojos have also waged battles with the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which has been implicated in the disappearance of 43 students in September 2014 in Iguala.
Violence is on the rise: official figures show 1,832 murders have been committed in Guerrero in the first 10 months of this year, compared to 1,651 over the same period in 2015. More than 1,300 people have been reported missing across the state since 2007.
