Mexican Authorities Struggle to ID 32 from Cartel’s Mass Grave

MONTERREY, Nuevo León — Mexican authorities continue working to identify bodies that were discovered inside a mass grave used by the Los Zetas Cartel.

The discovery was made last year near a hill in the town of Garcia, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Nuevo Leon government revealed. Since the discovery of the human remains, authorities have been working to identify the victims.

Authorities have been able to identify 24 of the victims while they continue trying to identify other 32 through the use of dental records and DNA testing. While the investigation remains ongoing, authorities revealed that the victims who have been identified had been reported missing since 2010. Law enforcement officials consulted by Breitbart Texas revealed that the mass grave had been used by the Los Zetas cartel as one of the many dumping grounds chosen by the cartel to dispose of evidence.

Mass graves have been used by drug cartels for years to hide the executions of hundreds. In 2011, authorities in Tamaulipas discovered more than 190 bodies in the rural community of San Fernando. The area was one of the strongholds of the Los Zetas cartel where the criminal organization had been hijacking passenger buses and blocking federal highways not only to steal vehicles and kidnap innocent victims, but also keep rival cartel members from entering their territory.

In February, Breitbart Texas published the result of a three month investigation into how the Los Zetas cartel kidnapped, murdered and incinerated more than 300 victims including women and children from the rural communities of Allende and Cinco Manantiales in the border state of Coahuila. With the help of corrupt public officials, more than 150 of the victims were incinerated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras, Coahuila.

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 Tony Aranda from Monterrey, Nuevo León and “J.M. Martinez” from Piedras Negras, Coahuila.