Blood stains the back of the livestock transport truck. The doors open: inside, twisted human bodies are crowded between black garbage bags that they used as raincoats to protect themselves from the heavy rains that have punished Chiapas these days. There are two more bodies, fallen on the grass. They can be seen in photographs taken with a phone of the crime scene. A group of 33 Asian, African and Latin American migrants were crossing the state crowded together on Tuesday night when they encountered an Army patrol. It is not clear what happened, but the result is: at least six people shot dead by the military and another 12 wounded. The last migrant massacre in Mexican territory.
The Army has recognized the massacre in a statement from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena). The two soldiers accused of shooting at the migrants have been “separated from their duties” and could face an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), which has not yet issued a statement. Chiapas, a state taken over by the war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, is the main entry point for migrants from Central and South America trying to reach the United States. This time, Latin Americans were a minority. People of “Egyptian, Nepalese, Cuban, Hindu, Pakistani and Arab nationality” were traveling in the livestock trucks.
Questioned by EL PAÍS, a Sedena spokesperson has indicated that by “Arab nationality” (which is not a nationality, but a language) they refer to citizens of Saudi Arabia, a country rich in oil and not used to using migratory routes. Mexican. Although the authorities have not yet reported the citizenship of the six dead, a source close to the investigation has indicated that they are five “Arabs” and one Salvadoran, a nationality that does not appear in the Army’s official count.
The event, which the military did not make public until Wednesday afternoon, when the local press had already reported on it, occurred during the night of Tuesday. The bodies were not lifted until 3:00 in the morning. According to the story released by the Army, a patrol was traveling along the rural highway that connects the municipalities of Villacomaltitlán and Huixtla in search of possible drug and human traffickers. Coyotes use this route, popularly known as Los Cocos, to avoid the usual immigration controls on the Pan-American Highway. At 8:50 p.m., the soldiers “detected a type vehicle pick up “That was going at high speed.” Always according to this version, the car tried to flee when it recognized the Sedena troops.
Behind the pick upThe two livestock trucks were traveling side by side, “shelter trucks like those used by criminal groups in that region.” The military allegedly heard two “detonations.” Two of them opened fire and shot them down. The truck carrying the migrants left the road and crashed into a tree. By the time the soldiers approached, the coyotes had fled. None have been arrested at the moment. The soldiers found dozens of shocked people crying and asking for help. The human traffickers had hidden them in the platform and floor of the truck, according to what was announced The Financier.
Four of them died there. Two others, at the Huixtla General Hospital, where they were transferred. There are another 12 injured and “17 unharmed,” according to Sedena. Those who survived are under the control of the National Migration Institute. “The two soldiers who fired were separated from their duties and since it was an event where civilians were affected, the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic was informed so that it could carry out the corresponding legal proceedings and determine and define the corresponding responsibilities; without prejudice to the Attorney General’s Office of Military Justice carrying out investigations regarding military discipline,” the Army has reported.
Neither the acting governor of Chiapas, Rutilio Escandón, nor his successor, Eduardo Ramírez, who will take office in December after being elected in the June 2 elections, have commented on the massacre. Ramírez has been traveling since this morning, as he announced on his social networks, when the information about the massacre had already been collected by the local press. Escandón visited a school during the day. The umpteenth migrant massacre in Mexico, this time at the hands of the Army, comes the day after the inauguration of the first president in its history, Claudia Sheinbaum, who has also not spoken about the massacre. Not even the National Migration Institute, an organization also harshly criticized for human rights violations, has done so.
The military’s relationship with Morena, the party of Sheinbaum, Escandón and Ramírez, has been questioned in recent weeks. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has granted growing power to the Army during his six-year term in civil tasks, such as immigration control at borders and airports, in the face of repeated criticism from the opposition, academia and different groups. of civil society. On September 25, the Senate also approved that the National Guard, which was born as a civilian body, would come under the control of Sedena, a controversial measure achieved in the time of stoppage time of the López Obrador Government thanks to the majority obtained by Sheinbaum on June 2.
He modus operandi The Army is usually opaque and in cases like this the information that is disseminated is minimal. The military spokesperson consulted by EL PAÍS only added that the investigation “will be determined by the competent authorities” and that no soldier has been injured. While the massacre is being clarified, the photograph of the blood-stained trucks remains, an image that is reminiscent of other recent ones and once again puts on the table the odyssey of the migrants who cross Mexico, surrounded by the authorities and organized crime.
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