Last Wednesday, the bodies of six young people who had been kidnapped in the region in recent days were found in the state of Zacatecas in Mexico.

The secretary of the local government, Rodrigo Reyes, explained that expert reports and forensic investigations were carried out, as well as recognition by relatives who managed to identify the young people.

The victims, aged between 14 and 18, were abducted at dawn last Sunday by an armed group from a farm in the town of Villanueva, where they had attended a party. They were friends with each other.

A young man managed to be rescued alive, but was injured with bruises on his head and face. Two men were arrested a day earlier and “there is a good chance that they are connected.”

The bodies and the survivor were found in a rural area of ​​the same municipality, amid operations by state and federal forces to rescue them.

Earlier this Thursday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador deplored the incident and said the injured young man, identified as Sergio Yobani Acevedo, “is testifying to determine the reason for these crimes.”

The death of the six young people occurred a month and a half after the kidnapping and possible murder of five other boys, childhood friends, in Lagos de Moreno (state of Jalisco, west), a case that caused shock.

Drug cartels are active in the area, fighting to establish routes and also collect extortions.

It was ruled out that this was forced recruitment by criminal groups, a practice that usually affects young men in several states of Mexico where drug gangs are active.

“These people were sleeping (…) when apparently around four in the morning they began to see the presence of a criminal group of people who arrived in vehicles and took them out and took them away,” said Zacatecas prosecutor Francisco Murillo. .

The events in Zacatecas are part of a wave of violence that escalated in several regions of the country this week. On Wednesday, armed groups blocked several roads in the state of Nuevo León (border with the United States) and set fire to vehicles, a day after at least seven dismembered bodies appeared in different parts of the city of Monterrey (north). capital and the most industrialized in Mexico.

Similarly, last weekend in Chiapas (south), an unprecedented parade of members of the Sinaloa Cartel was seen, which is contesting the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for control of border towns with Guatemala, causing shortages and electricity cuts. (JO)