2023-08-18 00:05:00
An apparent execution video purported to contain the last living moments of five young men recently kidnapped in northwestern Mexico has transported the country back to the darkest days of cartel brutality in the early 2000s.
The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said it was investigating the recording, which began to circulate massively on Wednesday, and the relatives of the group of disappeared friends told local media that the clothes seen in the video resembled those of their boys. .
The recording shows two handcuffed bodies, inert and bloody, lying in the foreground.
But someone is also seen off-screen throwing a brick at another young man — who could be one of those kidnapped — so that he hits a fourth person whom he also apparently decapitates.
“That video and that information that was made public on a social network are also part of the investigation,” Luis Méndez Ruiz, Jalisco’s attorney general, said Tuesday afternoon.
In the video a text appears written on the image that says “Puro MZ”, an apparent reference to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, but it is not clear who is responsible for the recording.
What is known about the five young people who disappeared in Jalisco?
The five young people from Jalisco disappeared on Friday, August 11, in Lagos de Moreno, a violent area where the group of friends went to attend a festival. From that moment on, a search operation was organized.
The young people were going to a popular fair in Lagos de Moreno. Since then, the relatives of Diego Alberto Lara Santoyo, Roberto Carlos Olmeda Cuéllar, Uriel Galván, Jaime Alfonso Martínez Miranda and Dante Cedillo Hernández have lost contact with them. All were between 19 and 21 years of age.
The clothing worn by the people in the video resembled the one that appeared in a photo uploaded to the networks and in which the young people were tied up, but alive. The families confirmed this point.
A body that appeared in a burned-out car in the area of the disappearance could be the fifth, although its identification has not yet been confirmed.
Before announcing the discovery of the charred remains, the authorities had reported that they had found a house in Lagos de Moreno where blood stains and footwear were found “which suggest that the five young people were on said farm,” the prosecutor’s office said.
He did not clarify if that house could be the place where the young people were photographed or where the video was recorded.
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Why has the video caused a stir?
The violent images have shocked a country that has become accustomed to reading headlines every day that reflect the almost 100 people a day who die in Mexico due to fights between drug cartels.
But the extreme cruelty of the video, which appears to show how the people seen in it are forced to kill each other, has shaken Mexican society.
If its authenticity is confirmed, the recording would revive the most brutal cases of organized crime in Mexico, when some criminal groups forced their hostages to do similar things.
In 2010, a Mexican cartel kidnapped men on passenger buses and forced them to fight each other to the death with sledgehammers.
Later it was learned that it was Los Zetas who acted in this way with those who resisted working for them.
That tragedy came to light in 2011 when the authorities found 48 clandestine graves with the bodies of 193 people in the border state of Tamaulipas, in the north of the country.
Most had their skulls smashed in with sledgehammers, and many were Central American migrants.
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What has the government said?
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador affirmed on Thursday that there is progress in the case, although he did not advance any. In the country, more than 90% of all crimes go unpunished, according to the organization México Evalúa.
The president was in controversy over the case on Wednesday, after after a question, he seemed not to listen, made gestures putting his hands to his ears and decided to tell the journalist a joke instead of talking about the tragedy, which he ended with laughter .
“They started screaming and I didn’t hear anything, nothing; So much so, that’s why I told that joke,” he said Thursday before going on to describe the Mexican press as “sold and rented,” which works in the most dangerous country to practice this trade in the Western Hemisphere. So far this year, at least five people who were engaged in journalism in Mexico have been murdered.
Apart from this recent controversy, the president insisted that his security policy is giving results, although recent events seem to show otherwise.
Is there an uptick in violence in Mexico?
In recent weeks, various events have suggested an escalation of violence with new and aggressive methods.
In July, eight roadside bombs, also in Jalisco, killed four police officers and two civilians and injured at least 15 people, including three minors, providing yet another example of the military-type challenge posed by criminal organizations for the Mexican security forces.
On this fact that originated from an anonymous complaint about the presence of human remains in the town of Tlajomulco, the prosecutor’s office reported on Thursday the prosecution of two people for possible “cover-up and false statements given to the authority.”
In total there are five detainees and prosecuted for the attack.
Just five days ago, in Poza Rica, a municipality in the state of Veracruz, in the Gulf of Mexico, the chopped, packaged and frozen human remains of at least 13 people were found in what, according to the government of that state, was a sample more of the fight between different organized crime groups.
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