VERACRUZ, Mexico—A group of bereaved parents who overcame government apathy to uncover one of the largest mass graves in the dark history of Mexico’s drug war have also exposed the government’s slow progress in attending to rights abuses and victims.
After a six-months plus investigation led by the families, government investigators in the Gulf state of Veracruz said on Tuesday they had found more than 250 skulls in shallow graves in a field, a record in the atrocities in Mexico.
On Thursday, reporters gained access for the first time to the lush tropical area spotted with lagoons, which is near a current major expansion of Veracruz city’s busy seaport.
The site was uncovered last year after a tip to members of Colectivo Solecito, one of several groups of frustrated relatives searching for the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing during the gang drug wars and whose cases are unsolved.
“The authorities don’t care about searching. Here, those who search are the parents,” said Rosalia Castro, who has been looking for her son since 2011. “The attention of the prosecutor’s office has been zero.”
Critics say the groups’ success in uncovering evidence of atrocities leaves authorities looking slow-footed and highlights the dismal human rights record of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Veracruz was ruled until late last year by PRI state governor Javier Duarte.
The case is also a reminder that while U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial immigration policies and planned border wall has provided a distraction from Mexico’s woes, crime and corruption continue to dog the party that hopes to stay in power in presidential elections next year.
Under Duarte, victims disappeared at the hands of gangs with the complicity of authorities, said Jorge Winckler, Veracruz state’s attorney general and a member of the opposition-led state government that took office in December.
