Authorities of the State of Puebla found this Friday the bodies of seven people abandoned in a vehicle, in the peripheral ring of Puebla, in the southern area of the city. Of the seven, five were decapitated and one more was dismembered. The State Attorney General, Gilberto Higuera, reported at a press conference that messages were found along with the bodies accusing the victims of different crimes. Asked about a possible reason for the massacre, Higuera said that “it could not only be a dispute [entre grupos criminales]but rather an action of domination by a criminal group over certain people, with possible recruitment purposes.”
Higuera has appeared before the press alongside the governor of the State, Sergio Salomón, the secretary of state security and municipal presidents of the capital and surrounding towns, as well as federal security commanders. The staging illustrated the seriousness of the matter. Salomón spoke first and said that “Puebla must continue to be an entity in which criminal violence does not find fertile ground to spread. I call for reflection,” the president added, “it is time to be united. Closing the path to crime implies the action of the security forces, but above all it implies raising awareness among all of us.”
Atrocities like this Friday in Puebla are relatively common in Mexico. So much so that, a few years ago, and given the wave of violence that the country is suffering, society is looking for new ways to count it, catalog it and classify it. The organization Causa en Común, for example, conducts an annual count of atrocities, which it defines as the “intentional use of physical force to cause death, laceration, or extreme mistreatment; to cause the death of a large number of people; to cause the death of vulnerable people or people of political interest, and/or to cause terror.”
Within the atrocities, Causa en Común handles several categories, including cases of torture, discovery of clandestine graves, lynchings, murders of journalists and political actors, or massacres, murders of three or more people. In 2023 alone, the organization counted 447 massacres in the country. Of those, 15 occurred in Puebla. Assuming the seriousness of the situation – 15 massacres in 365 days, in a State of six and a half million inhabitants – Puebla does not stand out especially in this section, which speaks of the disastrous state of security in the country.
Prosecutor Higuera has said that the authorities learned of the bodies from a call to the emergency number, around 6:00. First the police arrived, who cordoned off the place, and then experts from the Prosecutor's Office and agents from the agency, who lifted the bodies and protected the first clues, such as the messages found next to the bodies. “In each one we found a message written on paper, referring to the reason for the deprivation of life. All the messages accuse them of being participants in criminal activities such as drug dealing, transport theft, extortion,” said the prosecutor.
Higuera has also reported that the vehicle had been stolen on March 30 and that, from the security camera images, it is known that two people, the driver and co-pilot, left it in the middle of the ring road, crossed to the other side and left. They got into another vehicle, fleeing from there. At the moment there are no clues about the identity of the people who abandoned the car or those who helped them flee. The identity of the victims is also not known.
Journalists who listened to the words of the prosecutor and the governor have asked what everyone is wondering right now: why and what this matter is related to. The first question referred precisely to a propaganda video from a criminal group, allegedly linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, CJNG, released three days ago. In the images, the criminals, armed and with their faces covered, denounced state police commanders for their alleged collaboration with criminals. “It is being investigated whether the video is related to this event,” the governor said. They have also asked him if this event would be related to the attack against the director of a state prison at the beginning of last month, but the answer has been the same.
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