MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The discovery of 72 slain Central and South American migrants on a ranch just south of the U.S. border provides a horrific reminder of the brutality of human trafficking in a country dominated by drug cartels. A wounded Ecuadorean who escaped the killing ground in Mexico's Tamaulipas state told authorities that the migrants' abductors identified...
View full sizeThis image released by Mexico's Navy shows, shows the alleged site where 72 bodies, not seen, were found in San Fernando, eastern Mexico, Tuesday.MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The discovery of 72 slain Central and South American migrants on a ranch just south of the U.S. border provides a horrific reminder of the brutality of human trafficking in a country dominated by drug cartels.
A wounded Ecuadorean who escaped the killing ground in Mexico's Tamaulipas state told authorities that the migrants' abductors identified themselves as Zetas, a drug gang whose control of parts of the state is so brutal and complete that even many Mexicans avoid traveling its highways.
Migrants running the gauntlet up Mexico to reach the United States have long faced extortion, violence and theft. But reports have grown of mass kidnappings of migrants, who are forced to give the telephone numbers of relatives in the United States or back home who are then required to transfer ransom payments to the abductors.
Teresa Delagadillo, who works at the Casa San Juan Diego shelter in Matamoros just across from Brownsville, Texas, said she often hears stories about criminal gangs kidnapping and beating migrants to demand money - but never a horror story on the scale of this week's massacre.
"There hadn't been reports that they had killed them," she said.
In an April report, Amnesty International called the plight of tens of thousands of mainly Central American migrants crossing Mexico for the U.S. a major human rights crisis. The report called their journey "one of the most dangerous in the world" and said every year an untold number of migrants disappear without a trace.
Mexico's government has confirmed at least seven cases of cartels kidnapping groups of migrants so far this year, said Antonio Diaz, an official with the National Migration Institute, a think tank that studies immigration.
But other groups say migrant kidnappings are much more rampant. In its most recent study, the National Human Rights Commission said some 1,600 migrants are kidnapped in Mexico each month. It based its figures on the number of reports it received between September 2008 and February 2009.
Authorities said they were trying to determine whether the 72 victims in Tamaulipas were killed at the same time - and why. But government security spokesman Alejandro Poire noted migrants are frequently kidnapped by cartel gunmen demanding money.
Poire also said the government believes cartels are increasingly trying to recruit migrants as foot soldiers - a concern that has also been expressed by U.S. politicians demanding more security at the border.
If confirmed as a cartel kidnapping, the Tamaulipas massace would perhaps be the most extreme case seen so far and the bloodiest massace of Mexico's drug war.
"It's absolutely terrible and it demands the condemnation of all of our society," said Poire.