One out of three migrants who have gone missing in Mexico were last seen in Veracruz. But this is not only a dangerous place for Central American migrants. In the last two years, nine reporters have been killed in Veracruz, two have gone missing, at least a dozen have been forced to flee into exile, and the offices of a newspaper were set on fire.
They started to document the disappearance of women and girls in , when 14 women were killed in a brothel in Ciudad Isla, a town in southern Veracruz. The mutilated bodies of the women were only found several months after they went missing. Reliable statistics on the phenomenon are not available.
But that would appear to be the tip of the iceberg. In Puerto de Veracruz alone, a city of half a million people, there were 1, unidentified bodies in And these figures, provided by some 30 municipal governments, are incomplete. And no solution is in sight. On the contrary, security analysts predict a rise in violence in regions dominated by the Los Zetas drug cartel, since its leader, Heriberto Lazcano, was shot down by the Mexican marines on Oct.
Los Zetas, the most violent of the eight organised crime groups operating in Mexico, was created by former members of the military who had originally joined the Gulf Cartel. In the last few years, its power and influence has grown, and it now controls the entire eastern edge of the country. The latest battle by the people of Xalapa to regain control over their city was waged in the Jul.
