Mexican authorities said they recovered a total of 31 bodies from graves in a southeastern state wracked by cartel violence since they began digging the makeshift graves over the weekend.
Chiapas state governor Eduardo Ramírez announced an operation over the weekend to restore stability to Frailesca, an agricultural region near Guatemala where rival drug cartels have been engaged in a turf war.
“As of today (Monday) we have found a total of 25 clandestine graves, 31 bodies found, 29 of them men and two women,” explained Jorge Luis Llaven, prosecutor of the State of Chiapas in a statement.
The Chiapas state government initially said yes he discovered 15 bodies on Saturday Two more were found on Sunday and 14 more on Monday. Governor Ramirez released images of the scene over the weekend social networks.
The prosecutor said that his office and the State Security Secretariat will continue to investigate until they find “every one of the bodies of the people who have been reported as missing.”
Groups looking for missing persons they say drug cartels and other organized crime gangs sometimes use the ovens to incinerate their victims and leave no trace.
Mexico’s cartel-related violence is concentrated along drug routes, borders and ports of entry.
The state of Chiapas, on Mexico’s southern border, has been described by the think tank InSight Crime as “a major hub for drug and migrant trafficking”.
In October, the well-known Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez he was shot down and killed in Chiapas. Perez had received frequent threats and human rights advocates said he did not receive the government protection he needed.
The violence has coincided with the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco incursion into areas that were previously strongholds of the Sinaloa Cartelone of Mexico’s largest drug-trafficking organizations, he said.
Since Mexico began its controversial drug crackdown in 2006, more than 450,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands of people have gone missing, according to official figures.
Last week, the Mexican authorities discovered 12 bodies buried in clandestine graves in the north of the state of Chihuahua. Authorities discovered 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in Ascension Township, near the U.S. border, the state attorney’s office said in a statement.