The Santa Fe, Veracruz Grave

The latest report of the exhumation work in the collective grave of Colinas de Santa Fe in Veracruz highlights that most of the remains found in the grave are of young high school and college aged men and women.  The search groups narrate that they haven’t walked through half of the land and they don’t stop from discovering corpses.  People continue to disappear in Veracruz, in the context of the war declared by the delinquency against the local government.  240 bodies from 170 clandestine graves have been exhumed.

By: Ignacio Carvajal García | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

Mexico City/Veracruz, March 7, 2017— Blogexpediente had access to the latest report on exhumation work in the collective graves of Colinas de Santa Fe, and what stands out the most of the 240 bodies exhumed so far is that they mostly consist of young people.

The last cutoff on the works in the collective graves of Colinas de Santa Fe state that 240 bodies from 117 clandestine graves have been exhumed.

And in the middle of the cluster of bodies, the mothers of the collective Solecito, who are actively working in this grave, what has surprised them is the high number of young people among the victims.

“Most of them are young people, women and guys, although people with gray hairs have also been found, despite the advanced state of decomposition, that detail has been observed,” said a source close to the work on the grave, at the request of anonymity.

Among the findings of the various graves, which show the slaughter of young people; clothing, footwear, and intimate clothing corresponding to the ages of 14 and 25 are also abundant.

The information that this medium accessed shows that the finding of bodies far from diminishing increases, and these graves are not even half of the terrain.

The last cutoff on the works in the collective graves of Colinas de Santa Fe state that 240 bodies from 117 clandestine graves have been exhumed. Photo: Cuartoscuro Archive

They consist of 125 graves located until the beginning of March, of which 177 have been worked on, which have resulted in the findings of 240 skulls, which is equal to the number of victims, more than half, correspond to boys who were high school or college aged.

Activists That Revealed Patrocinio, Coahuila “Extermination Camp” Find 5,000 Bone Remains in Viesca

Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

Silvia Ortiz, spokeswoman for the group Víctimas por sus Desaparecidos en Acción (VIDA), said that last Saturday, they found more skeletal remains, molars, and gun casings on a property in the locality Estación Claudio.

Mexico City, Mexico, December 13, 2016 (SinEmbargo) – More than 5,000 human remains were found on a site in the municipality of Viesca, Coahuila, by the same organization that revealed the existence of the “extermination camp” in the common land of Patrocinio.

Silvia Ortiz, spokeswoman for the group Víctimas por sus Desaparecidos en Acción (VIDA), said that last Saturday, they found more skeletal remains, molars, and gun casings on a property in the locality Estación Claudio.

This is the fourth time that the relatives of the disappeared have searched the place this year.  And for two years now, the families of the disappeared have searched the area in search of their relatives.

The property measures around three hectares, although it was only possible to check a quadrant of about 100 square meters, an activist told the newspaper Reforma.  Patrocinio measures around 43 hectares (106 acres).

“The forensic police told us that Estación Claudio is a small Patrocinio, they found about 5,000 [remains], but it still hasn’t finished searching the area,” Ortiz told the national media outlet.

“The woman told Reforma that it is necessary to continue the searches on both sides “but not only those of the forensics, the PGJE [Prosecutor General of Justice of the State of Coahuila] was supposed to help them, but no, they are now asking for the collaboration so that they can go to Claudio and for the others to continue in Patrocinio.”

Silvia Ortiz told El Siglo de Torreón that she expects these tasks to intensify at least this week because they will be suspended for the holiday period.

The Clandestine Graves of Tetelcingo: The Stories of the Victims

By: Jaime Luis Brito | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

With the face of their missing on their shirts or on a sign, relatives of missing persons work with the state attorney, The Autonomous University of Morelos, and federal corporations in the clandestine graves of Tetelcingo.  They carefully record the removal of bodies in order to help identify them and to help alleviate the pain of the relatives, as Concepción and Lina narrate, two of the searchers who, thanks to them, helped with the reopening of the graves.

Tetelcingo, Morelos— This morelense town “represents the confirmation that the State also has its clandestine graves”, says Javier Sicilia, founder of the Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity).    At least here, the local district attorney dug two or “maybe three”, where they irregularly deposited more than 100 bodies.  The authorities say it is a “common practice” of the district attorneys in the country, even if it’s illegal.

During the recent exhumations, in addition to the forensic teams of the Attorney General of the State of Morelos (FGE), The Autonomous University of the State of Morelos (UAEM), the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico and the federal police, a group of mothers and relatives of the disappeared have had to use Tyvek suits, such as those used by forensics, to witness and record everything that happens in the graves.

In this case, the work of María Concepción Hernández Hernández, mother of Oliver Wenceslao, a merchant from Cuautla who was kidnapped and killed by criminals in 2013 and whose body was illegally buried along with the other bodies in these graves, has been instrumental.

After recovering the body of her son in December 2014, María Concepción and her sister, Amalia, began a legal and civil battle in order for the graves to be reopened and to identify the other bodies.

She was born in Cuautla and is 55 years old.  “I never imagined that this would happen.  But my son gives me the strength, because I love my children too much, that’s why I’m here, because I couldn’t stop thinking about what was happening to the mothers of the people who are in the graves,” she says during a break from the work.