Severed heads dumped in center of Mexican town
Pastor Dale Morgan
Severed heads dumped in center of Mexican town
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By Monica Medel
Reuters
October 8, 2006; 5:01 PM
MORELIA, Mexico (Reuters) - Two severed heads were found in a busy town
center in Mexico on Saturday several kilometers from their bodies,
police said, the latest in a string of gory killings in crime-infested
Michoacan state.
The two male heads had been dumped outside a car showroom in the
colonial town of Zitacuaro, in a mountainous area bristling with drug
gangs fighting over smuggling routes.
A note left with them read: "The Michoacan family are not extortionists.
P.S. I'm waiting for your next call." Similar messages have been left
with other human heads in a rash of decapitations and murders in recent
weeks.
The mens' bodies were found, covered with burn marks, in the outskirts
of Zitacuaro. One had been handcuffed, the other's hands were bound with
brown tape.
A spokesman for the state attorney general's office said the crime had
"all the characteristics" of being related to drug trafficking,
"The level of violence has increased considerably as they are trying to
due to control the territory, the geography of Michoacan," state police
coordinator Roberto Fuerte told Reuters. "They are very powerful cartels
that have been in other states and are now trying to seize our territory."
The victims, one of whom was a former federal policeman, were identified
as two local men kidnapped in late September.
Around a dozen severed human heads have been dumped in Michoacan state
over the past month. In early September, an armed gang wearing ski masks
threw five severed heads onto the dance floor of a local bar.
The incidents have highlighted the challenges facing Mexico's
president-elect Felipe Calderon when he takes office in December.
Calderon was born in Michoacan, where gangs grow marijuana, poppies for
opium and heroin, and make methamphetamine in clandestine labs.
The state's long Pacific coastline makes it an easy embarkation point
for cocaine shipped to the United States.