Bodies of 72 Migrants Found Near U.S. Border

On Tuesday, Mexican Marines discovered the bodies of 72 migrants near the town of San Fernando in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. They had been brutally massacred; their bodies were found blindfolded and riddled with gunshot wounds. The sole survivor, shot and wounded himself, survived to tell quite a tale to the Mexican authorities. The migrants, coming mostly from Central America, had been ruthlessly killed by members of a powerful drug cartel in one of the largest single-day massacres in recent Mexican history.

'They violently forced us down from the truck to demand money, but nobody had any," said Luis Pomavilla, an 18-year-old migrant and sole survivor of the attack. "Then they offered us to work for them. They said that they were Zetas, that they would pay us 1,000 dollars a fortnight. But we did not accept, and they shot us," the young man said.

The Zetas, or Los Zetas, as they are more commonly known, are the former paramilitary wing of the Gulf Cartel. Now a splinter group, the criminal organization engages in large-scale drug trafficking, extortion, assassination, kidnapping, and theft. In the last several years, Los Zetas, along with several other Mexican drug cartels, have been raising the stakes, becoming increasingly involved in human smuggling operations into the United States.

Independent coyotes, once the primary conduit for migrants attempting to cross the border into the U.S., are now being forced out by the drug cartels. As a result, the danger already a part of migrating to the United States has proved to be more expensive, risky, and violent. Drug cartels see migrants as vulnerable prey, and have increased efforts to harass, exploit and kidnap these immigrants.

A report in the Los Angeles Times, describes the relatively recent development of drug cartel's involvement in the human smuggling business: "It was not always like this; migrants and drugs once occupied separate worlds. But tougher border enforcement has pushed the groups into the same obscure parts of the desert. The close company adds a new element of danger to migrants' already perilous journey, and may be responsible for a drop in immigration and economic decline in towns that depend on the migrants."

Although undocumented immigrants entering the United States from Mexico and drug traffickers are often swept together within anti-immigrant talking points, the two groups must be understood as belonging to two different worlds. Although drug cartels are increasingly ingratiating themselves into the human smuggling trade, they often treat their clients as cattle, subhuman in every sense if the word. They force immigrants into working for them. They kidnap immigrants and milk their families for ransom. They endanger every person seeking a better life in the United States, and in this case, they are willing and able to brutally punish immigrants who do not submit to their way.

Photo credit: zieak