One of Mexico’s most violent cartels dumped the bodies of hundreds, perhaps thousands of their victims into various dams and lakes throughout the northern part of Mexico and along the U.S. border.
In a new report by Mexico’s Revista Proceso, Los Zetas top leader Omar Treviño “Z-42” Morales Treviños allegedly told a state investigator to search the dams when he was asked about the mass disappearances throughout the areas where the cartel operated.
Some of those areas where Los Zetas operated include lakes in Mexico and Texas such as Falcon and Amistad–which are believed to be the untimely resting places of hundreds of victims. Mexican authorities have carried out searches for bodies in the Mexican sides.
Through brute force and with the help of some Mexican officials, members of Los Zetas Cartel were able to establish themselves in Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. It is in those areas where the cartel has been singled out as being responsible for thousands of unsolved cases. However, bureaucrats refuse to classify the cases as homicides and simply list them as missing persons.
Breitbart Texas published in early 2016 the results of a three-month investigation which revealed that between 2011 and 2013, Los Zetas carried out multiple kidnapping operations where they are believed to have taken, murdered, and incinerated approximately 300 from rural communities in northern Coahuila. At least half of those were incinerated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras, while others are believed destroyed using 55-gallon drums and clandestine ovens.
The new revelations from the report add more weight to the working theories that many of the dams have become clandestine graveyards–similar to the Los Zetas-linked sites in other parts of Mexico.
In 2011, Los Zetas murdered 72 Central American migrants at a ranch in rural San Fernando, approximately 80 miles south of the Texas border. Six months later, Mexican authorities discovered a series of mass graves with at least 193 bodies.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.