Authorities on the Gulf Coast of Mexico said the bodies of seven men were found dumped on a road in the Huasteca region, which is very popular with tourists.
San Luis Potosi state prosecutors said Thursday afternoon that the bodies did not appear to be from the town of Aquismon and could have been killed elsewhere and dumped in the countryside.
The photos of the bodies showed large bruises on the corpses, suggesting that they had been beaten.
Writing with markers on corpses said “this is what happened to me when I worked with the Gulf,” an apparent reference to the Gulf Cartel, which operates primarily along the U.S. border.
The messages were signed “Operation Valles OB”, apparently a reference to a rival band.
The Huasteca region has long been popular with Mexican tourists for its waterfalls and crystal clear rivers.
An archival photo from 2016 of the Micas waterfall in the Huasteca area of the state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Mahaux Charles / AGF / Universal via Getty
Last month, the Justice Department said former Golf Cartel leader Mario Cardenas-Guillen was extradited to Texas on drug trafficking charges.
The cartel uses “extreme intimidation and violence to maintain control of its territories in northeastern Mexico and introduce deadly drugs into U.S. communities,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said.
According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, the Gulf Cartel was the main competitor that challenged Sinaloa for traffic routes in the early 2000s, but is now battling its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas. , and the Zeta Cartel splitting groups on the territory in northeastern Mexico. .
Mexico has recently experienced a wave of deadly violence linked to cartels and gangs.
On Tuesday, gunmen killed five high school students and a woman in a street shooting in the state of Guanajuato, an area where gangs are fighting for control of drug and stolen fuel trafficking routes.
Two weeks earlier, eight women and three men had been killed in an apparent revenge attack on two bars and a hotel in Celaya, another city in Guanajuato.
Since December 2006, when the government launched a controversial military anti-drug operation, Mexico has recorded more than 340,000 killings, according to official figures.
Authorities have attributed most of the killings to organized crime.
In April, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed that Mexico had disbanded a special unit trained by U.S. authorities to fight drug cartels because it had been infiltrated by criminals.