Mexico City – Mexican authorities have discovered 12 bodies buried in clandestine graves in the northern state of Chihuahua, officials said Thursday.
Authorities discovered 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in the community of Ascension, near the U.S. border, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“The discovery was made during tracking operations that took place on December 18, 19 and 20,” the report said.
“The unidentified skeletons and evidence were transferred to the Forensic Medical Service laboratories” in the city of Ciudad Juarez for possible identification and to determine possible causes of death, the report said.
Drug cartels and kidnapping gangs in Mexico often use such clandestine dumps to dispose of the bodies of their victims or rivals. This creepy practice has contributed to the enormous problem of missing people in Mexico, which now numbers about 120,000.
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The relatives of most of these missing people are largely left to search for their loved ones on their own, often forming volunteer search parties that venture into the desert in search of clandestine graves. It was not known whether any of these volunteer groups had helped authorities locate the graves in Ascencion.
Chihuahua has been hit for years by violence linked to organized crime as a route for drug trafficking and migrant smuggling into the United States.
According to official figures, 3,927 missing persons have been registered since 1952. Jalisco and Tamaulipas, the states hardest hit by violence, each registered more than 13,000 missing persons in the same period.
More than 450,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since the government deployed the military to combat human trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.
