Migrants at risk: violence looms along the journey to U.S.

On Aug. 24, wounded, 18 year-old Luis Freddy Lala stumbled to a highway marine

Image released by Mexico’s Navy of the site where 72 bodies were found checkpoint in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and alerted the authorities of what he had witnessed and survived. Lala led the Marines to a ranch, where they found 72 massacred bodies of Central and South American migrants just 100 miles from the U.S. border.

According to Mexcican government security spokesman Alejandro Poire, the migrant told authorities his captors identified themselves as Zetas, a gang of former Mexican army special forces, and that the migrants, 58 men and 14 women, were from Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras.

The Mexican government is in contact with those countries to confirm the identities of the migrants. Consular officials from Brazil, Ecuador and El Salvador had no immediate confirmation on whether any of their citizens were among the dead.

If the investigations corroborate Lala’s story, the massacre will be the most gruesome example yet of the plight of migrants trying to cross a country where drug cartels are increasingly scouting shelters and highways, hoping to extort or recruit vulnerable migrants.

Poire noted that migrants are, in fact, frequently kidnapped by cartel gunmen demanding money, sometimes contacting relatives in the United States to extract ransom, and that the government also believes cartels are increasingly trying to recruit migrants as foot soldiers

One story among 72

According to the Associated Press, Lala’s family told Ecuadorian television on Aug. 26 that he left his remote town in the Andes Mountains two months ago in the hopes of reaching the United States.

“I told him not to go but he went,” one of his brothers, Luis Alfredo Lala, told a television station from Lala’s hometown.

Lala’s parents already live in the United States and send money home to the family, and Lala had been the primary caretaker for his eight siblings and his grandmother, according to a cousin.

Lala, who is recovering from a gunshot to the neck at a hospital in Matamoros eastern Mexico, has a 17-yearold pregnant wife in Ecuador, Maria Angelica Lala. She told Teleamazonas that her husband had paid $15,000 for a smuggler to guide him to the United States.

That smuggler apparently tried to hide Lala’s fate from his family, calling on Aug. 25 to tell Maria Angelica that Lala had safely reached Los Angeles. It was the day after Mexican marines acting on Lala’s tip had raided the ranch, found the slain migrant, and seized 21 assault rifles, shotguns and rifles and detained a minor, apparently part of the gang.

The death of a dream

In 2009, The National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) issued a report documenting the alarming levels of abductions of migrants by criminal gangs, and related abuses. The report concluded that, on the basis of the interviews conducted, as many as 9,758 migrants had been kidnapped over a six-month period between 2008 and 2009, including at least 57 children.

The report suggested that Mexico was experiencing a hidden epidemic of kidnappings, with the majority of the most severe abuses occurring in the states crossed by the freight trains on the principal routes used by migrants, such as Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Veracruz and Tamaulipas, where the massacre took place.

The journey through Mexico has become more and more treacherous as suspected drug traffickers branch out into other businesses, including human trafficking, forcing “coyotes” (smugglers) to hand over their migrants.

“Every year, thousands of migrants are kidnapped, threatened or assaulted by members of criminal gangs,” Amnesty International said in a report released in April.

“Extortion and sexual violence are widespread and many migrants go missing or are killed. Few of these abuses are reported and in most cases those responsible are never held to account.”

The tragedy in Tamaulipas was the third time this year that Mexican authorities have discovered a large number of corpses at one grave site. In the other two cases, investigators believe the bodies were dumped at the sites over a long time.

In May, authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned mine near Taxco, a colonial-era city south of Mexico City that is popular with tourists.

In July, investigators found 51 corpses in two days of digging in a field near a trash dump outside the northern metropolis of Monterrey.