Mexican authorities have found 35 bodies buried around the metropolitan area of Guadalajara , the country’s second largest city, state prosecutors said on Saturday.
The discovery of the bodies was another reminder of the titanic task faced by President López Obrador , who took office in December and vowed to reduce the cartel-fueled violence that resulted in at least 29,000 murders in Mexico last year, a record number.
Gerardo Octavio Solis
, the Attorney General of Jalisco , Guadalajara’s home state, said 27 bodies were found buried at a property in the Zapopan area during investigations undertaken over the past week but confirmed work was still underway. So far, only two victims have been identified.
“We’re digging more than three meters down,” Solis told a news conference with state governor Enrique Alfaro and other officials in attendance.
Another 7 human skulls were found in a separate clandestine grave in the city, where investigations were also ongoing. An additional body was recovered from the Tlajomulco municipality in the southwest of Guadalajara , Solis added.
Solis described the discovery of the graves as a blow to local organized crime and said four suspects had been arrested.
It was unclear for how long the bodies had been buried .
The state is home to one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels , the Jalisco New Generation Cartel , and has suffered from the turf wars that have convulsed much of the country.
López Obrador
says he is containing the problem, but homicides in the first four months of his government exceeded the levels registered a year earlier, official data showed.
The discovery of the mass graves motivated the families of missing people to ask the local government for information regarding the bodies .
gm