Last Thursday, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission revealed that three young American siblings were executed by Mexican marines and a border mayor’s paramilitary security team in 2014.
Erica Alvarado Salinas, 26, Alex Alvarado, 22, and Jose Angel Alvarado, 21, disappeared on October 13, 2014. They had been visiting their father in El Control, a small town near Matamoros, and had left to visit their mother’s home in Progreso, Texas.
On October 29, 2014, their bodies, along with Salinas’ boyfriend, Jose Guadalupe Castaneda Benitez, 32, who was from Mexico, were found in a field east of Matamoros, all of them shot in the head. Benitez had been convicted three times for illegal entry into the U.S. and was “possibly associated” with a criminal organization, according to a Homeland Security Investigations document; Erica Salinas and Alex Alvarado had been arrested on marijuana smuggling charges on October 7, 2013, at the Falfurrias checkpoint operated by U.S. Border Patrol. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]More than two dozen bodies, some of which were dismembered, were found buried in a Mexican sugarcane field and authorities said Wednesday that they believe the deaths were drug-related.
Four graves containing the remains of 33 people were located in the township of Xalisco, part of the state of Nayarit. The area is known as a base for a black-tar heroin trafficking ring. The first pit contained the remains of nine bodies and trained dogs led searchers to three other pits nearby.
The gruesome findings follow an ongoing power struggle between drug gangs in the area after the March arrest of Edgar Veytia, the former state attorney general, who faces U.S. charges of drug smuggling.
“The assumption is that these were people who were involved with one of the various criminal groups, but I can’t say which one,” current state Attorney General Petronilo Diaz said, referring to the bodies in the graves. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]The Department of State issued Wednesday its semi-annual travel warning for Mexico, putting five of the country’s states in the same threat category as war-torn Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
As a whole, Mexico was rated at the second-lowest of four threat levels in the department’s new travel advisory system rolled out last week.
But five Mexican states — Sinaloa, Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima and Tamaulipas — were given the highest rating of “do not travel,” the same designation applied to near-failed states plagued by terrorism and open warfare.
The State Department’s travel advisory system now uses four tiers: “exercise normal precautions,” “exercise increased caution,” “reconsider travel” and “do not travel.”
Countries labeled “do not travel” present a high likelihood of life-threatening risks for travelers, and U.S. government officials stationed in those places have “very limited ability” to assist Americans in distress, according to the State Department. – READ MORE
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