Story By: Jonathan Macias, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
The relatives of disappeared people in Mexico frustrated at local authorities failures to find their loved ones claim to have found 12 so-called ‘kitchens’ where cartels reportedly dissolve victims using chemicals.
According to local media, the National Brigade of Searching for Missing People (‘Brigada Nacional de Busqueda de Personas Desaparecidas’ in Spanish), formed by more than 300 relatives of missing people, found 12 places known as ‘kitchens’ in the state of Veracruz where drug cartels were supposedly dissolving human bodies in plastic containers using chemicals.
Reports said that the organisation confirmed that they had even found human bones alongside pieces of clothing or knives in these 12 locations in Veracruz after two weeks of intensive searches across the state.
A member of the brigade named Juan Carlos Trujillo told local media: “The families in deep sorrow have left their homes for 15 days to search and try and find out what happened.”
The human remains are often difficult to identify as they have decomposed after being burned or buried in the ground.
One of the locations is reportedly a farm located in the municipality of Tihuatlan and known as ‘La Gallera’ (‘The Henhouse’).
Local authorities previously searched this place that was reportedly owned by the drug cartel ‘Los Zetas’ for five years although relatives complained the search was not thorough enough.
Mario Vergara from the told local media: “This should be a shame for the Mexican state. They searched four times and they could not dig out all our relatives.”
The mother of a missing victim Maria Herrera told local media: “This is a calling to show people all the pain that they are leaving behind, we cannot stand it any more.”
The human bones are now under the Republic Attorney’s Office that has launched an investigation to clarify who they belong to and return them to their families.
According to the Mexican government, 61,637 people remain missing in the country.
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