MEXICO CITY — Authorities said Monday they found 19 bodies stacked in and around a dump truck in a cartel-dominated area in southern Mexico, near the border with Guatemala.
The federal Public Security Secretariat said the men’s bodies were found in an abandoned pickup truck on a rural road near the town of La Concordia, in the southern state of Chiapas.
The bodies of fourteen men were piled in the bed of the dump truck, two more were found in the cab, two were just outside the truck and another body was found about 100 meters (yards) away.
The department said the victims were shot to death and that there were at least six men carrying Guatemalan identification documents.
He said the killings appear to be related to bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa drug cartel and a rival gang known as the Mexico-Guatemala cartel. The latter gang may have ties to Sinaloa’s archrival, the Jalisco cartel.
As migrant smuggling and drug trafficking have become more lucrative in the area, cartels have been fighting for control of smuggling routes over the past year.
The increase in violence in the state of Chiapas has caused thousands of people to flee their homes.
In May, a mayoral candidate and five other people were killed when gunmen opened fire at a campaign rally in La Concordia, about 80 miles (125 kilometers) from the border with Guatemala.
A young woman was among the six people killed in the shooting, along with mayoral candidate Lucero López Maza. Two other people were injured and the motive for the attack is still unclear.
That shooting occurred a few days later. 11 people were killed in mass shootings in a town in the district of Chicomuselo, Chiapas, a few dozen kilometers from La Concordia.
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