PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila — Between 2011 and 2013, members of Los Zetas Cartel kidnapped, murdered, and incinerated more than 300 victims from rural communities in the northern part of this state. Relatives of those victims never stopped searching for answers or evidence to grant them closure.
One of the most recent discoveries in the town of Villa Union, less than 30 miles south of Eagle Pass, Texas, revealed promising evidence. On a remote tract of land, volunteer search parties found ash and bone fragments, a 55-gallon drum, and a bullet casing.
Starting in 2011, Los Zetas gunmen carried out hundreds of mass kidnappings and executions and then used 55-gallon drums, brick ovens, and other means to incinerate their victims, Breitbart Texas reported in February 2016, after a three-month investigation into the case. Approximately 150 of the victims were incinerated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras with knowledge of state officials at the highest levels. The disappearances continued until 2013 when Los Zetas were driven underground by a special, anti-cartel police force.
In recent years, support groups such as Wings of Hope rallied together to find answers to the atrocities, help locate survivors, and bring closure to families. According to Wings of Hope President Olga Lidia Saucedo, the evidence found during the most recent searches will be sent to Coahuila state laboratories to determine if they can extract DNA.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.M. Martinez” from Coahuila.