At least five bodies were found this Tuesday afternoon in four clandestine graves, in an indigenous Purépecha area of the western Mexican state of Michoacán.
The State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) confirmed that an anonymous complaint to the Chilchota Municipality Police revealed the discovery of the graves, in a difficult-to-access property located on top of a mountain in the indigenous town of Huecato.
Personnel from the FGE’s Specialized Crime Scene Unit (UEEC) carried out various excavations that allowed the exhumation of bone fragments from five people.
The bodies were transferred to the Forensic Medical Service (SEMEFO), where they will be subjected to studies to determine their sex, identity, and the cause of the deaths, although authorities presume that the victims were shot to death.
Chilchota is an indigenous municipality of Michoacán where there is a bloody fight between the Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) cartels, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Los Reyes and Los Caballeros Templarios, which are fighting with blood and fire for control of illicit activities in the region .
This crime is added to the shooting murder of five men whose corpses were abandoned on Sunday night, by alleged hitmen, in the indigenous municipality of Tangamandapio, a town where on November 1, 11 Purepecha who was collecting honey in a wooded area were murdered. , for the offerings of the Night of the Dead.
The governor of Michoacán, Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, acknowledged that the state is going through a serious crisis of violence, which has worsened since 2015 in the 113 municipalities of Michoacán.
Just in the early hours of last Monday, a group of alleged hitmen broke into a clandestine palenque in the town of La Gironda, in the municipality of Zitácuaro, adjacent to the State of Mexico, killing four men and wounding seven. plus.
Previously, during the early hours of Sunday, a group of hitmen attacked the bar “Chivis”, in the municipality of Cuitzeo – 35 kilometers from the city of Morelia, the state capital – with bursts of heavy-caliber rifles, killing two men. and injuring six people. A woman, the owner of the establishment, has been reported missing.
The State Commission for Human Rights (CEDH) estimates that in Michoacán at least 14,000 skeletons have been found in recent years, which remain unidentified in forensic rooms throughout the state.
Mexico has recorded the two most violent years in its history in the first two years of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with 34,682 homicides in 2019 and 34,557 in 2020.