SAN JUAN, MEXICO - On Sunday officials in Mexico reported that forty-nine dismembered bodies were found along a highway that leads from Monterrey, Mexico to Texas. The bodies had been mutilated and hacked apart. The heads, hands and feet were gone. The dead included 43 men and 6 women.
The AP describes the bodies as being “scattered in a pool of blood” near Cadereyta Jimenez and the town of San Juan. The body dump was located just 105 miles west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, or 75 miles southwest of the Roma, Texas border crossing
A welcome sign near what is being described as the killing field was covered with a graffiti message, “100% Zeta.” The Zetas are one of the two largest, and most violent, drug cartels in Mexico.
Jorge Domene, a Mexican state security spokesman, said in a press conference on Sunday, "This continues to be violence between criminal groups. This is not an attack against the civilian population."
One might argue that psychologically it is an attack on any citizen who passes by a pile of 49 mutilated bodies alongside a roadway. The identities of those killed is unknown.
Domene said,"What's complicating the identification of all the people was that they were all headless." Domene confirmed that the Zetas have claimed responsibility for the killings.
The body count however in just the past few months is on the rise in an already unimaginably bloody Mexican war on drugs that has resulted in 47,500 deaths over the past six years.
The AP reports that 14 mutilated bodies were left in a minivan in downtown Nuevo Laredo, adjacent to Laredo, Texas on April 17.
On May 5, 23 bodies were found near Nuevo Laredo City Hall, some were hanging from a bridge, the others decapitated.
On May 9, 18 dismembered bodies were dumped outside of Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara.
In September 35 bodies were dumped in Veracruz.
In August the Zeta’s attacked a Monterrey casino killing 52 people.
Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey are territory claimed by the Zetas gang. Guadalajara has been controlled by the Sinaloa cartel, the Zeta’s top rival for control of lucrative drug routes into the U.S.
