The Government of Zacatecas announced this Thursday the progress in the investigation of the massacre that occurred on July 18 in three municipalities of that State, when 10 people were killed, including a former mayor, two public servants from Fresnillo, and seven other businessmen. Five of the bodies of these victims were displayed on a vehicular bridge, in an act of extreme violence not seen in Mexican territory for years. The state Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that eight of them had prior contact with their attackers before being killed. “Eight of our victims were summoned to a meeting. [They] had contact or direct communication with their attackers, the first of whom was Fidel [Alvarado de la Torre], who served as an official of the Fresnillo City Council,” reported state prosecutor Cristian Paul Camacho Osnaya.
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The authorities assured that the eight men informed their families or close ones before attending said meeting, a conclusion they stated was reached after verifying material from intercepted phone lines and interviews with close persons who confirmed this version. “Each of them warned that they were going to a meeting ‘with the gentlemen,’ that is what most of these eight people who had prior communication before being deprived of life have stated,” specified Camacho Osnaya, who also detailed that seven of the victims—the businessmen—had a commercial, business, or labor relationship with the municipality of Fresnillo.
One of the cases that has caused the most bewilderment is that of the young firefighter and nurse who was part of the civil protection body of the Fresnillo City Council, Jesús Gerardo Muñetón Hernández, whose presence on the list of victims and his involvement in the case the state prosecutor has referred to on several occasions as “circumstantial,” without giving further details. The young man had four years of service as a volunteer and one year as a permanent member of that security body which, some of its members have assured, had no precedents of threats against him nor signs of aggression.
The Zacatecas Security Cabinet also reported that 17 raids have been carried out in different parts of the State, where they have seized weapons, drugs, tactical equipment, money counting machines, several vehicles, and “prohibited” items that were in possession of the 14 detainees—three from Durango, three from Sinaloa, and one from Zacatecas—who are currently at the disposal of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (FGR) and the State Prosecutor’s Office. The person from Zacatecas is the 16-year-old teenager, arrested on July 21 along with two other men. Seven of the total detainees are “of high relevance” to determine responsibilities in the massacre, assured the prosecutor.
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In the State of Zacatecas, governed by David Monreal, from the ruling Morena party, violence has intensified in recent years, although local authorities have defended that there has been a “pacification” in the last five years, with a drop in homicide figures. The entity has been the scene, during that time, of several massacres and discoveries of graves with human remains and has also been a focus of disappearances of people or transit places for the criminal groups that carry them out.
On July 18, that terror again captured the spotlight and outrage, when several bodies appeared on a vehicular bridge and others, simultaneously, were found in various points of the area. The identities of the victims left even more fear and questions among the population, as they included the former mayor of the municipality of Sombrerete, Ignacio Nacho Castrejón, who was also a businessman; the two officials from Fresnillo, Fidel Alvarado de la Torre, head of Social Development, and Jesús Gerardo Chuy Muñetón Hernández, member of the Fire Department; the businessmen Jesús Rivera Sandoval, José Armando Ledesma Campos and his son, José Armando Ledesma Aguirre; Juan Carlos Berumen Guerrero; the builder Fernando Robles de la Torre and the rancher José Ángel Valdez Rivera, as well as the Durango lawyer and former PAN councilor of the Canatlán City Council, Andrés Vázquez Gurrola.
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