XONACATLAN, Mexico — With only odd jobs to support a young wife and a 2- year-old son in their concrete hut on a dirt road, Uriel Carvajal decided to seek work in the U.S., heading from central Mexico by bus to the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas.
When he didn’t call home, his two brothers went looking for him, also by bus. Now none of the brothers — Uriel, 21, Rene, 28, and Cirilo, 23 — has been heard from.
A month after Uriel left home, the Carvajal family knows only that Rene’s identification card turned up in one of 26 pits found in Tamaulipas, where 145 bodies have been dug up so far. Authorities told the family to take Uriel’s toddler, Ariel, to state offices to give a DNA sample.
The same trauma visited three times on one family reflects larger questions that so far state and federal authorities have failed to answer: How could bodies pile up again in a place just 90 miles from the U.S. border where 72 migrants were slaughtered eight months ago?
And how could new horrors emerge only five months after state and federal authorities announced they were mounting a coordinated offensive to take Tamaulipas back from the hands of warring drug cartels?
“That is precisely the question we all have,” said Fernando Batista Jimenez, an investigator for Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights who is handling one of the cases. “It’s no more than a reflection that the authorities have not been able to contain this wave of violence in general and particularly in places such as this case in Tamaulipas.”
The Mexican navy said Saturday it had captured the presumed leader of the San Fernando cell of the Zetas drug gang, suspected in both mass killings.
Martin Omar Estrada Luna, alias “El Kilo,” is thought to be involved in the killing of the 145, as well as the migrant massacre in August in the violent border state across from Texas, according to a statement issued by the navy.
The Mexican government last week offered a $1.27 million reward for information leading to Estrada Luna’s capture. The navy provided no others details Saturday.
President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday implored Mexicans to say “Ya, basta!” — Enough! — stressing that their anger should be directed at criminals and not authorities.
The line between those enforcing and breaking laws, however, has been fuzzy.
On Wednesday, 16 police officers in San Fernando, where both slaughters occurred, were detained for protecting the Zetas. That led national radio talk show host Carmen Aristegui to ask on Thursday: “Which is which?”
Requests by The Associated Press to interview Calderon’s security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, and officials from the Department of Interior, Defense and the Attorney General were not answered.
But public and off-the- record statements by parties involved indicate that Tamaulipas presents a complex situation that even federal forces can’t handle. Generations of mistrust complicate the federal effort, as well as links between local officials and organized crime dating back to the 1920s Prohibition era in the U.S., when the border state became a popular smuggling route for liquor.
Calderon again on Friday said he has ordered the increase of federal forces in Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and parts of the neighboring states of Coahuila and San Luis Potosi without providing details, and that he would reinforce operations to ensure security for those traveling on roads and in buses.
