mtgoat666 - 9-14-2020 at 07:41 PM
Parents dig for hours, but are unable to find remains of missing teenager — More than 1,400 people have vanished in Baja California in the last
decade, according to state figures
[warning: this story ain’t happy]
By WENDY FRY
SDUT
SEP. 13, 2020
TIJUANA — A smell of death drapes over the unfinished two-story house on Calle Loma Alta on Tijuana’s eastern side. Neighbors report sometimes
hearing screams coming from the abandoned property.
Inside, the floor is littered with empty Coca-Cola bottles and dozens of children’s toys and grade school notebooks. Clothes are piled everywhere.
Partially burnt mattresses cover the door frames to several rooms.
In one, wooden planks are nailed to the floor with heavy chains piled on top. Stacks of different size stones are nearby with chains also attached to
the rocks. A boulder, twice the size of a basketball, is marked with chiseled incisions.
Spray-painted in red in the corner are the words “Te Amo.” I love you. Two Virgin de Guadalupe plaques are propped against the wall above the
television set, illuminated by a working light bulb.
The remains of four teenage boys have been discovered on this property in recent months.
But not by police.
The bodies were unearthed by parents who regularly defy police orders in order to exhume the remains of their murdered children. The parents say the
house in the Colonia Campos neighborhood belongs to a former Tijuana police officer. State officials declined to comment.
Parents buy shovels and beg Mexican officials to help find their missing children
“If it costs me my life, I’m taking my son’s body out of that house”
On Saturday, flustered Baja California police officers stood outside the property line, threatening to arrest the parents who partially barricaded
themselves inside. The police took pictures of each person, including a dozen reporters, and noted all the license plates numbers of the vehicles
parked outside.
Then, shortly before noon, a handful of officers breached the barricade and partially made their way onto the property. The parents and the police
yelled back-and-forth at each other while some parents formed a line refusing to let the police advance, while other parents continued digging.
Jesus Varajas Chairezat, a U.S. citizen and member of the parent group, put out both hands, blocking the authorities with his body and yelling until
they retreated.
One state officer, who declined to give his name, said authorities were very concerned the house would tumble down, as a handful of the parents took
turns jack-hammering through its concrete foundation.
This particular parent group, Colectivo de Madres en Búsqueda de sus Tesoros Perdidos, or the Collective of Mothers Searching for their Lost
Treasures, is among hundreds of coalitions that have formed throughout Mexico to help one another search for the remains of their missing children.
They find safety in numbers and comfort each other during and after the searches.
It’s a response to what they describe as failure by the Mexican government to investigate the cases of their missing children. More than 1,400
people have vanished in Baja California in the last decade, according to state figures.
Across Mexico, more than 61,000 citizens have disappeared from 2006 to 2019, federal figures show. The vast majority are young men in their early 20s,
casualties of the country’s soaring cartel-fueled violence.
“The Mexican government is not capable of protecting its citizens,” explained Varajas, a Riverside resident and president of Buscando a Tolando,
or Searching for Tolando, group. Tolando is his missing brother.
Varajas said the state prosecutor’s office and the National Commission of Human Rights was supposed to accompany the parents on their search
Saturday, but they backed out at the last minute. A state spokesman declined to respond. The National Commission of Human Rights did not return a
request for comment.
“They ride around in their luxury SUVs protecting top government officials ... Why doesn’t (Gov.) Jaime Bonilla come see what’s going on here?
Why doesn’t he come help us find our kids?” he adds, his voice rising to a yell.
Bonilla did not respond to a request for comment posted Sunday to his daily news conference, which is streamed live online instead of in-person
because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the parents took turns drilling into the concrete Saturday, one of the mothers got an anonymous call from an Ensenada phone number with
instructions on exactly where in the house to find the body of her son, Cesar.
A meter and a half under the foundation, on the right side of the bathroom, under a tarp and piles of trash, there she will find him, a man on the
other end of the line tells her. She speaks with him politely, putting his voice on the speaker of the cellphone, so the other parents and reporters
can also hear the instructions.
Barbara Martinez said she has to push aside her fear and anger, not just for herself but for the other parents whose children are also buried there.
The man has told her there are four other corpses buried with her son, she explains.
“It’s my son. And even if they threaten me or do something to me, I don’t care because that man is an animal for leaving my son buried here,”
said Martinez, after hanging up.
Her 17-year-old son disappeared from Tijuana’s Urbi Villa Prado II neighborhood in October 2018.
The remains of his best friend and two acquaintances have already been found on the property during previous parent-led searches. Martinez said she
does not know the identity of the caller, who directed the parents to the remains of the other children in recent months. She said she only knows that
he is a powerful person in Ensenada, and not the owner of the property.
“One time he told me: ‘You know what, lady? Go ahead and take your son out of that house and enjoy burying him because after that, I’m coming
for you. I’m going to kill you because you have discovered my graveyard,’” Martinez said, during an interview last month.
She shrugged off the threat: “Look at me, I’m already dead inside. You killed my son. What else can you do to me?”
A different tipster originally directed Martinez to the home nearly a year ago. That man was fatally shot days later, she said. Baja California
authorities confirmed the shooting but did not say his death was related to Martinez’s son’s missing persons case.
Normally, the parents search rugged and remote hillsides for clandestine mass graves, known as “fosas clandestinas.” Since June, they have
discovered more than two-dozen bodies in such remote areas, outside the city, but this search is unique because it is inside a home. Parents don’t
typically dare to search properties, which are often located in the middle of gang-controlled neighborhoods without escape options.
“There are so many houses just like this one all throughout Tijuana where hundreds of people are buried. There are so many mothers who have no idea
what happened to their children,” said Varajas.
Varajas used electric power tools and a shovel to dig into the ground for hours Saturday until he was so exhausted he lay down on the ground and
immediately fell asleep.
“Why do I do it? These people are victims just like I am a victim, and everyone has turned their back on them, including the United States,” he
said.
After he woke up from his short nap, he went right back to digging, and continued until midnight and his hands bled.
“These cartels tell these kids they have to sell drugs or they’ll be killed. When they refuse, they kill them. It’s that simple. They’re
either turned into criminals or corpses,” said Varajas.
Nearby, a San Diego woman quietly watched Varajas dig more than a meter into earth under the concrete foundation of the home. Her 18-year-old son,
Miguel Rendon, also a San Diego resident, went missing on May 29 from a motel on Boulevard Cuauhtemoc in Tijuana.
“Every time I see they have found bodies, I think it could be my son. I don’t want to believe he is dead, but it’s already been more than three
months that he’s been missing,” said mother Emma Medrano.
As afternoon turned to evening Saturday, Martinez, who initiated the search, became more and more distraught. At one point, she became overheated and
unable to catch her breath after hours of digging in a hole now deeper than her own height.
“I can’t wait until I never have to come back to this hell-hole again,” she said. “But, I’ll be here until I find him.”
Martinez said she needs to have her son’s remains somewhere where she can peacefully visit regularly.
“So, I can sit there calmly and tell him: ‘Look, I don’t know how I possibly failed you in life, so that you ended up down there and me still
here, but I won’t ever leave you,’” she explained.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-califo...
Don Pisto - 9-14-2020 at 08:34 PM
but, but I read here its all peace love and fish taco's?
BajaBlanca - 9-15-2020 at 02:55 AM
Incredible and unbelievably sad. I cannot even imagine this scenario and my kids.
mtgoat666 - 9-15-2020 at 05:39 AM
The worst thing about the savage cruelty of the cartels Is that in many areas of Baja and Mexico the cops And the government are in on it. The cops
and the government are aiding and abetting in the murders of people, and in some cases the cops and government are committing the murders on behalf of
the cartels.
When people on here tell stories about their run-ins with cops asking for cash for traffic violations, they should remember that many cops in Mexico
are murders or are assisting murders... many cops in Mexico are inhumane...
[Edited on 9-15-2020 by mtgoat666]
Mr. Doom and Gloom
Lobsterman - 9-15-2020 at 05:54 AM
What's your point other than self-promotion.
BajaTed - 9-15-2020 at 06:49 AM
“Look at me, I’m already dead inside. You killed my son. What else can you do to me?”
Whale-ista - 9-15-2020 at 11:10 AM
These killings are horrifying- but not completely unexpected for anyone watching the progression of this "industry" over the last 20+ years.
In the 1990s, killings were usually targeted against threats or competitors to drug cartels. "Civilians" were left alone.
But as cartels were disrupted by increased law enforcement actions and investigations, the violence spread to the community at large. When more
powerful weapons were put into use, in Tijuana and other urban areas, more innocent bystanders were killed during shoot-outs.
Before all this, in the early 1990s, things were relatively calm. Then, in 1997, my house in San Miguel (north of Ensenada) was broken into multiple
times by a local gang. The gang members became increasingly brazen. One night, neighbors interrupted them after they heard them shatter a sliding
glass door. The robbers didn't leave: They warned the neighbors to return to their homes and not call police.
A short time later, nearly 20 people were assassinated in a residential compound near El Sauzal, a few miles south of San Miguel. All were shot- but
one person survived under the pile of bodies.
The break-ins stopped. The local assumption was the gang had over-reached, and the Arellano cartel had decided to put an end to their actions.
The sole survivor of this shoot-out lived near my house, and for months afterwards, when I went for walks, I would see armed guards outside.
So the violence is not new, but the random nature and body count is increasing.
PS- I did have insurance at the time, that covered the loss of SCUBA gear etc. stolen from the house- but securing a police report was incredibly
difficult. I'll leave that for another post...
[Edited on 9-15-2020 by Whale-ista]
SFandH - 9-15-2020 at 11:29 AM
I did some additional reading and apparently what is being addressed in the news article is murders of teenage and young men somehow involved in the
drug trade.
-----------------------------
"In January, the Mexican government published a report that estimated 61,637 citizens disappeared between 2006 and December 2019. The vast majority
are young men in their early 20s. It is the hidden toll of the war against drug gangs, backed by the United States, that has grown more violent and
more powerful."
"Baja California is basically ground zero for the disappearances of the modern war on drugs in Mexico," said Michael Lettieri, Doctor of Philosophy,
Senior Human Rights Fellow at the Center for United States-Mexico Studies at the University of California at San Diego.
"It's just the history and nature of the drug war in Mexico and official complicity, and the official failure to find the missing people," Lettieri
said. “It has a pretty long history in Baja; longer than in other places that are now hot spots ”.
Parents buy shovels and beg Mexican authorities to help find their missing children
https://www.latimes.com/espanol/internacional/articulo/2020-...
My browser (Chrome) does a good job of translating.