(Photo : ISAAC GUZMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Violence between drug cartels has led to the evacuation of thousands as a brutal drug war continues to ravage Mexico’s poorest and southernmost state.
Earlier this week, Mexican officials unearthed a grim discovery: 19 bodies were found in a dump truck on a remote dirt road.
Authorities believe the victims are linked to the escalating violence of a brutal trafficking war that is ravaging Mexico's poorest and southernmost state.
The men had all been shot dead, according to Mexico's Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection.
Their bodies were found in and around the abandoned truck, and six were found with Guatemalan identification on them.
On Tuesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador described the loss of life as "lamentable" and blamed it on a conflict between two armed groups.
"What motivates this?" asked López Obrador.
"The traffic of drugs and also the traffic of migrants, of people."
The Sinaloa Cartel and its major rival, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, have been long vying for control of valuable smuggling routes in Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.
It's unclear if the deceased were linked to the Jalisco cartel or if they were killed in a shootout or executed.
Mike Vigil, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's overseas operations, said,
"Unfortunately, Chiapas has been caught in the middle of this trafficking war for both drugs and migrants," adding that "smuggling migrants has now become a multibillion dollar business for the cartels."
The region, a crucial route for cocaine from South America and migrants from Central America heading to the US, has drawn criminal gangs to its jungle, mountains, and rivers, where much of the population is Indigenous, according to The Los Angeles Times.
"Violence has spread like a cancer in our state," reported the Chiapas-based Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights in April.
La Concordia, the Chiapas municipality where the bodies were found, has seen rapid waves of violence in recent months.
In the weeks before last month's elections in Chiapas, a wave of attacks on mayoral candidates and their teams left at least 16 people dead, including 28-year-old Lucero Esmeralda López Maza, who was running for mayor in La Concordia.
