IGUALA,
Mexico — The journey up — far, far up — to the mass graves here begins
on a paved street in a cluttered neighborhood of this industrial city
under the thumb of organized crime.
Soon
the climb turns rocky, rutted and uneven, pounding the undercarriage of
a regular sedan and slowing even four-wheel-drive trucks. Then it gives
way to gravel and more jagged stones before jerking and jarring to an
end at a narrow, forest-shrouded trail impassable for any vehicle.
Along
this last, steep stretch, with overhanging vines and branches forcing a
hunched walk and strenuous stepping, it becomes eerily clear that the
people in these hillside graves were brought up here alive and then
marched to their deaths.
That
is what prosecutors believe happened to at least some of the 28 people
whose bodies, badly burned and some dismembered, were found over the
weekend in several pits on the hill, discovered only after witnesses in
custody revealed the horrors committed here.
Swarming
flies buzz in air reeking of rot. Charred wood and ash in the fetid
muck testify to the burning, the macabre tableau in the mountains
pointing to the societal decay down below.
The
witnesses — members of a local gang that the authorities say has
infiltrated the police department in this and other towns — said that 17
students from a local teachers college were apprehended by police
officers, turned over to the gang, taken high up on this hill, killed
and buried.
They
are among 43 students reported missing after a confrontation Sept. 26
with the local police, leaving a series of pressing questions
unanswered. Where are the other students? Why would the police want them
killed? And if many of these bodies are not those of missing students,
whose are they?
It will take time for investigators to confirm the identities of the people buried here. This is a Mexico struggling to overcome a wave of drug and organized crime violence that has left tens of thousands killed and missing.
So, like many others over the years, it may take time for this grave to give up its secrets.
But
its very existence has revealed the troubles below: yet another
iteration of the dizzying constellation of Mexican criminal groups that
corrupt and control with impunity.
A
group called Guerreros Unidos, an offshoot of the larger, powerful
Beltrán Leyva cartel that officials say is crumbling under law
enforcement pressure, held a strong grip here, operating a thriving
criminal enterprise that sowed violence and fear.
The
other morning, dozens of the city’s police officers lined up with
duffel bags packed for a long stay somewhere. They were being marched
off by the federal police for questioning about criminal ties. Already,
22 officers are in custody, accused of participating in two bouts of
gunfire that left six people dead, including three of the college
students, who were part of a group attempting to steal buses to ferry
protesters to and from a demonstration over school financing cuts, the
authorities said.
Police
officers, the state prosecutor said, rounded up several students and
turned them over to Guerreros Unidos gang members, who, for reasons not
yet known, killed them on the orders of a leader known as El Chucky.
The
group’s reach, the authorities now believe, went all the way from
collecting hefty parking fines to extracting extortion payments from
businesses — with the endorsement of, if not leadership from, City Hall.
The
mayor, José Luis Abarca, who is wanted for questioning in the case, is a
fugitive. Two brothers of his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda, were
killed in 2009, and were known operatives in the Beltrán Leyva drug
cartel, one of the country’s largest.
This
was something of an open secret. Although residents of this city of
120,000, a farming and manufacturing center 120 miles south of Mexico
City, readily whisper that city leaders “were all narcos,” as one street
vendor put it, it does not appear that the state or federal authorities
took much action.
Members
of Mr. Abarca’s own party, the left-leaning Party of the Democratic
Revolution, said this week that they had presented complaints to the
federal prosecutor’s office about Mr. Abarca’s suspected ties to
organized crime, but that nothing was done.
A
national party leader, René Bejarano, said the dossier included sworn
testimony from a witness who reported seeing the mayor shoot to death a
social activist last year and bury him in a clandestine grave. (It is
not clear if it was the same one on the hill.)
Jesús
Murillo Karam, the federal prosecutor, told foreign journalists in his
office on Tuesday that he never received conclusive evidence of such
allegations. Although he acknowledged the wife’s family had organized
crime ties, there was no federal investigation of the mayor.
“We don’t investigate based on kinship, only on facts,” he said.
Still,
he conceded that Guerreros Unidos had grown powerful after the
authorities weakened a rival group, Los Rojos, another offshoot of a
larger gang, La Familia. Guerreros Unidos is now believed to be heavily
involved in the trafficking of marijuana and heroin as far away as
Chicago, he said.
The
group has formed alliances with municipal authorities to such an extent
that the governor of the state of Guerrero is calling on all 81 mayors
in the state and their respective police to be investigated.
Shortly
before the shooting began and the students disappeared, Ms. Pineda, who
was in charge of the family services office here, was giving a speech
in the central square celebrating the year’s accomplishments.
Mexican
news reports, citing federal intelligence sources, said the mayor
feared that the students, whose school has a history of blocking streets
and other militant acts, would descend on the square and ordered the
police to stop them and “teach them a lesson.”
Mr. Murillo Karam declined to comment on any theory, saying that a motive had not been established.
At
a morgue in the state capital, forensic investigators are working to
identify the remains found on the hill. Families of the missing students
reel with anguish as they wait to learn if their children were killed,
in a country where forced disappearances are usually not solved.
At the top of a hill, empty pits bear silent testimony to murder, but whose?
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