Mexico Drug War Victims Mourned on Day of the Dead Catherine Bremer - Reuters go to original
Mexicans prepare for annual Day of the Dead celebrations. The Day of the Death is a pre-hispanic tradition where families remember the dead and celebrate the continuity of life. Reuters' Lindsay Claiborn reports.
Apatzingan, Mexico - Musicians in black sombreros serenaded a tomb where women in designer sunglasses and gold jewelry dabbed their eyes with tissues as relatives mourned victims of Mexico's drug war on the Day of the Dead. "They shot him 10 times in the stomach and once in the head. They were waiting for him; they shot him and drove off," said Yolanda, a niece of Juan Manuel Magana, a 41-year-old car salesman gunned down by suspected drug hit men in April. "This place is full of narco tombs. Once they buried just a head here; they never found the rest of the body," she sniffed, sipping a beer at the graveside piled with wreaths of gaudily colored ribbon. As Mexicans streamed to cemeteries on Friday to heap traditional marigolds, candy skulls and flickering candles on loved ones' tombs for the Day of the Dead festival, many in the grubby town of Apatzingan were remembering drug crime victims. Some 4,500 people have been killed in Mexico in the last two years, most of them in a feud between the Gulf Cartel and an alliance of traffickers from Sinaloa state. President Felipe Calderon has sent about 25,000 troops to take on the traffickers and their local proxies in places like Apatzingan, nestled in the hilly Pacific state of Michoacan, Once known as the birthplace of Mexico's first constitution, Apatzingan is now synonymous with drug gang bloodshed. Since cartels moved in a few years ago, the town has become awash with guns and narcotics cash, and the discovery of bodies in shallow graves dubbed "narco pits" has become common. The victims include gang members shot in score settling between feuding cartels, police and businessmen sucked into a murky underworld of bribes, threats and favors. "They're narcos, that family. Listen - you can tell by the words the musicians are singing," a cemetery employee whispers, gesturing at mourners near a group of shiny sport utility vehicles. "That one is too, you can tell by the amount of money they have. It's all from organized crime," he says, nodding at a domed mausoleum the size of a house and topped by a neon cross where more musicians are blasting out "corrida" ballads. The tombs are like palaces among the rows of humble wooden crosses poking out of mounds of earth where poorer families draped rosary beads and left flowers and sweet bread for their departed loved ones. GRIM UNDERCURRENT Across the country, Mexicans keep alive a tradition that blends Catholic rituals with the pre-Hispanic belief that the dead return once a year from the underworld. Families leave out plates of boiled eggs, chicken in "mole" sauce and cans of beer to greet them. In much of Mexico, drug violence adds a grim undercurrent to the practice. "I've come to ask protection for my family from this narco war," said tractor driver Valdemar Hernandez, 54, at a shrine near the northern border city of Reynosa to "Saint Death," a ghoulish grim reaper figure that gangsters believe protects them. "It's not safe any more," he said. In Apatzingan, where families clutching torches and armfuls of blooms flocked to graves from Thursday night, some of the newest tombs hold people caught up in gun battles with the army - incidents now being investigated by human rights bodies. Thousands of troops were sent here 10 months ago to clamp down on the cocaine-smuggling cartels attracted to the region's coastline and its fertile red soil where marijuana flourishes. "The narcos are people from outside but they're hurting our image," said Alfonso Mirada, as he tended his late mother's grave. "It's ugly. Nowadays everybody here is armed." This month alone, three people were shot dead during a public fiesta in Apatzingan's main square and the bodies of two teenage girls and a 38-year-old man from the same family were found in a shallow grave. The man's body had been dissolved in caustic soda and the girls may have been buried alive. "Everybody links Apatzingan to narcos," said Olga Ayala, who works at the near-empty tourist office. "It will be difficult to get rid of this notoriety." Additional reporting by Magdiel Hernandez in Reynosa
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Catherine Bremer - Reuters
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