Pubdate: Sat, 9 Apr 2011
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A6
Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Elisabeth Malkin
Note: Kirsten Luce contributed reporting from Matamoros, Mexico, and 
Antonio Betancourt from Mexico City.

MASS GRAVES RAISE CONCERNS ABOUT BRAZEN GANGS KIDNAPPING MEXICAN MIGRANTS

MEXICO CITY -- They were young men, traveling by bus to work in the 
fields and factories of northeastern Mexico, or perhaps hoping to get 
across the border to a job in the United States. Somewhere along the 
way, they vanished.

The discovery this week of 72 bodies dumped in mass graves in a 
no-man's-land about 85 miles south of the United States border may 
offer a terrible answer to the mystery of what happened to at least 
some of the missing men. They were forced off the buses at gunpoint, 
perhaps kidnapped for ransom or press-ganged into drug cartels, officials say.

Much of this is still speculation, awaiting the identification of 
many of the bodies that are lying in a refrigerated truck outside the 
morgue in Matamoros, Mexico, across the border from Brownsville, Tex.

But what it suggests is that criminal gangs operating south of the 
Texas border in Tamaulipas State have become so bold that they now 
target innocent victims in full view of witnesses.

That the kidnappings occurred in an area that should have been the 
focus of law enforcement efforts makes them even more brazen. Last 
August, the bodies of 72 South and Central American migrants were 
found very close to where the latest graves were discovered, in the 
municipality of San Fernando. Since then, President Felipe Calderon, 
who has not spoken publicly about the latest killings, has poured 
troops into Tamaulipas.

Migrants crossing through Mexico have long been vulnerable to 
kidnapping because they are fearful of going to the authorities. But 
now, the bus kidnappings suggest that the gangs operating in 
Tamaulipas, which has become a battleground between the Zetas and 
their former bosses in the Gulf Cartel, have begun to target Mexicans.

Since Thursday, when news of the graves broke, families whose 
relatives have disappeared have been filing into the offices of the 
Tamaulipas State prosecutor in Matamoros, filling out papers in the 
hope that sometime next week, when authorities say they will have 
identified the bodies, there will be news of some kind, even if it is bad.

Many of the families last saw their relatives long before the reports 
of the bus kidnappings broke, but they seemed eager to explore even 
the remotest of possibilities.

Elio Morales Garcia's 18-year-old son went out to play football last 
June and never came home to his family in Matamoros. "I have heard 
nothing of him since then," said Mr. Morales, a construction worker 
who came with his wife and daughter on Friday afternoon.

At first he was told that his son, who is also called Elio and sold 
fruit juices on the street, had been arrested by the Mexican Navy, 
but the navy gave him no information. "We thought maybe he was being 
held in Mexico City for some kind of problem," he said.

Seizing on any scrap of news, Mr. Morales came to the prosecutor's 
office on Friday, hoping that perhaps he could speak to one of the 
freed hostages, that somebody had seen his son.

"We just came to check," he said. "We still have hope. We will be 
back Tuesday to check."

Daniel Alvarez Vazquez came in search of news of his son, Emilio 
Alvarez Perez, 30, who worked the night shift at a hotel in San 
Fernando. "The bad people" took him away in a truck one night in 
March 2010, said Mr. Alvarez, 77.

Calls have also been coming in from across a central belt of states 
where people have disappeared after they set off on buses to the 
border along a route took them across Tamaulipas.

The authorities in Michoacan reported that three groups from that 
state had disappeared in the past weeks as they crossed through 
Tamaulipas. A group of 40 people from the central state of Queretaro 
disappeared in March 2010 without a trace. Twenty agricultural 
workers from San Luis Potosi, the state on the border of Tamaulipas, 
have also been missing since last year.

Morelos Canseco Gomez, the interior secretary of Tamaulipas state, 
said in media interviews on Friday that all the victims appeared to 
be men and that he believed they were all Mexican. Ten graves have 
been found so far, but he said it was possible that more could be 
discovered as security forces continue to search.

The bus kidnappings emerged two weeks ago after family members 
reported missing relatives. State and federal authorities arrested 14 
people and freed five hostages who had been kidnapped from one of the 
buses. That led the authorities to the mass graves, which they began 
to uncover on April 1.

A picture of some of the missing men began to emerge Friday.

In Guanajuato, 21 people who were traveling to the border through 
Tamaulipas have been reported missing over the past couple of days, 
said the attorney general there. Citing relatives and witnesses, the 
attorney general, Carlos Zamarripa, gave a chilling account of what 
happened to one group that had set off from the city of Celaya in two 
buses bound for the border.

As the buses neared San Fernando, armed men boarded and asked 
everybody to show their identification, Mr. Zamarripa said. They 
selected 17 people, forced them off and ordered the buses to drive on.

The witnesses assumed that it was a criminal group "by the way they 
operated and how they behaved, how they spoke," he said.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake