The Highway of Death: the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo section that adds more than 77 missing people in 2021

The President of the National Commission for Tracing Persons, Karla quintana, confirmed the discovery of a new killing center close to the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway, also known as “La Carretera de la Muerte”.

“It is a property of significant dimensions, where what we found and confirmed was the presence of a large underground crematorium, where there are also different indications of charred bone remainsQuintana explained during his speech on the show So things of the journalist Gabriela Warkentin.

“At first glance, we can say that this is a crematorium that has been in use for several years and that it continued to operate until recently in the vicinity of Nuevo Laredo”, he added. .

According to columnist Héctor de Mauleón, throughout 2021, authorities in Tamaulipas reported 77 disappearances in the 219 kilometer section of the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway, of which only 18 people were found alive, and all they said was gunmen forced them to stop on the highway and took their vehicles.

Among the missing are 31 trailer drivers, 32 passenger car drivers, eight private company drivers, three Didi drivers, two Uber drivers and one taxi driver. Most of the victims were men between the ages of 18 and 40 and came from Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, State of Mexico, San Luis Potosí and Veracruz.

One of the victims said a group of armed men kidnapped her on this road and then took her to a room where other people were tortured and interrogated.

On June 3, José de Jesús Gómez, a resident of Irving, Texas, disappeared in the said section. Gladys Pérez Sánchez, who was traveling with her two children, aged nine and 16, to Salinas de Hidalgo, Laredo, Texas, is also missing.

On the way from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo, Jesús Castro, driver of the mobility app, Didi, has stopped communicating with his relatives. His trace disappeared in the Ajidores neighborhood, near where a caravan driver identified as Jesús Flores went missing on May 15.

Juan Pérez Hernández, who was traveling with his 16 and 20-year-old nephews, disappeared in the same neighborhood, as did Javier Toto Cagal, who was accompanied by three colleagues and whose trace was lost on June 3 on this road. .

The first investigations by the Mexican authorities confirmed that in reality the disappearances they are works of organized crime, and the fierce fighting in the state between rival gangs. And it is that this is a region in which the Northeast Cartel (CDN) has unleashed a bloody fight with the Gulf Cartel and its new ally, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).

On the one hand, the authorities attributed the disappearances to the criminal groups who were originally the “polleros” responsible for transporting the migrants to the border. Another hypothesis is the alleged search for commandos linked to the CJNG who would have approached from the north to carry out the dispute over the territory.

The National Guard (GN) and other federal forces attempted to protect the 219 kilometers of the highway, but disappearances continue to be reported.

“There is no way at this time to confirm or assert that these are the same people who have been reported missing on this route in recent years.. This is something that will have to be confirmed expertly, ”explained Quintana, speaking of the latest discovery of an underground crematorium around kilometer 26.

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