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By Chris Covert
Ten unidentified individuals were found tortured and shot to death on a remote road in northern Veracruz state Friday morning, according to Mexican news accounts.
The victims were found dead around 0900 hrs Friday morning along a dirt road in Tampico Alto municipality, just south of Tampico Tamaulipas, but in Veracruz state. Nine of the victims had been beheaded, but all ten had been handcuffed and tortured.
Reports say Mexican security forces in the area had cordoned off parts of northern Veracruz state near Tampico after intervening following several small arms attacks on buses along a road about 40 kilometers south of Tampico Thursday morning.
To read the Rantburg report on Thursday's fighting which claimed 16 lives, click here.
Five of the armed suspects had been located and killed by elements of the Mexican Army after they had attacked buses and killed seven individuals. The suspects later emerged from a bar, apparently drunk, before Mexican soldiers shot and killed them. Five armed suspects died in that encounter.
It is unlikely this latest discovery had a direct connection to Thursday's fighting, as the discovery was made near Mexican Federal Highway 180, about 15 kilometers due east of Panuco, Veracruz, and close to 50 kilometers north of Tantoyuca, Veracruz, where the three buses were attacked.
It may have been the same group which did these latest murders, but not the same incident.
Mexican news reports for the first time credit the deployment of newly raised additional Mexican Army troops in northern border states for the decline in violence in border states. The change in violent attacks and intergang fighting has been stark. Trom Juarez to, apparently Tamaulipas state, the decline has been as much as half of the violence from last year.
Apparently active criminal groups have shifted their violent revenue generating activities away from such areas as Tamaulipas -- and, to a lesser extent, Nuevo Leon -- towards second tier states such as Veracruz, Zacatecas and Durango because of the increased presence and activity of federal security forces in northern border states, including Mexican Army and Mexican Naval Infantry troops (Marines).
A good example would be the municipality of San Fernando where a Los Zetas group spent about two months in Spring, 2011 hijacking buses to be robbed and, it has been alleged, to recruit new shooters. Stories had been recently published in such publications as the leftist news weekly Proceso, which gave voice to local concerns that the Zetas criminal group -- responsible for almost 200 violent deaths over a six month period from August, 2010 to the discovery of the mass graves in May and June, 2011 -- would return.
The 193 death toll in the mass graves of San Fernando does not include the 72 Central and Southern American migrants who were massacred by Los Zetas operatives in San Fernando in August of 2010. That massacre was done as part of an extortion scheme.
Since that time a small Mexican Army contingent has been in San Fernando, and now with the news that some criminal groups have left the northern states, it appears, due in part to the presence of federal security troops, those fears may have been unfounded.
The presence of those troops in northern Mexican states may also go a long way towards explaining the decline in the numbers of migrants travelling north to the US.