Mexican authorities said they recovered a total of 31 bodies from pits in a southeastern state plagued by cartel violence since they began excavating the improvised graves at the weekend.
Chiapas State Governor Eduardo Ramirez over the weekend announced an operation to restore stability to Frailesca, an agricultural region near Guatemala where rival drug cartels have been involved in a turf war.
“As of today (Monday), we have found a total of 25 clandestine graves, 31 bodies found, 29 of them male and two female,” said Jorge Luis Llaven, the state prosecutor of Chiapas in a statement.
The Chiapas state government initially said it had discovered 15 bodies on Saturday. A further two were found on Sunday and 14 more on Monday. Gov. Ramirez posted images of the scene over the weekend on social media.
The prosecutor said his office and the state security secretariat will continue investigating until they find “each one of the bodies of the people who have been reported missing.”
Collectives searching for missing persons say that drug trafficking cartels and other organized crime gangs sometimes use ovens to incinerate their victims and leave no trace.
Mexico’s cartel-related violence is concentrated along drug trafficking routes, borders and ports of entry.
Chiapas state, on Mexico’s southern border, has been described by the InSight Crime think tank as “a major smuggling hub of both drugs and migrants.”
In October, well-known Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez was gunned down and killed in Chiapas. Pérez had often received threats, and human rights advocates said he did not receive the government protection he needed.
Violence has coincided with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel incursion into areas that were once strongholds of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s biggest drug trafficking organizations, it said.
Since Mexico launched its controversial anti-drug operation in 2006, it has recorded more than 450,000 murders and tens of thousands of people have gone missing, according to official figures.
Last week, Mexican authorities discovered 12 bodies buried in clandestine graves in the northern Chihuahua state. Authorities discovered 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in Ascension municipality near the U.S. border, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
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