Decmeber 16, 2019
High Impunity
This summer, Miguel Ángel Gómez Jácome, communications coordinator of the Mexican NGO Impunidad Cero, reported that 98.86% of all crimes committed in Mexico are not prosecuted. This alarming number is the statistic for the country as a whole. As you move from state to state, the level of impunity increases or decreases.
In the state of Tamaulipas, which borders the US at Texas, the rate of impunity is at 99.99%. In other words, there’s a .01% chance that any given crime will be prosecuted, including rape, robbery, and murder. The statistic almost seems like a joke, but it’s not very funny. The citizens of Tamaulipas and many other states in Mexico have to live in jurisdictions where reporting a crime is essentially a waste of time.
Unfortunately, matters are worse than the statistics show. How can this be possible?
Authorities are finding hidden cemeteries all over the country, which contain murder victims, and these murders aren’t part of the official crime statistics.
So, that 99.99% in Tamaulipas is much higher.
How a Mass Grave Might Come Into Existence
Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas
In 2014, unknown cartel members began dumping bodies at the front door of a funeral home in this small town. For a good stretch of that time, the killers were averaging at least one body per day, according to the owner, whose name has been withheld for his own safety. The dumping continued until some time in 2016.
Whenever a body would show up, the owner of the funeral home would get on the horn and call the nearest authorities to report the occurrence. However, no action was ever taken, and the owner was forced to come up with a plan of his own for handling the accumulating bodies.
His solution was to do what he did best: bury them.
He went out into the outskirts of Miguel Aleman and began digging. Soon, he would complete his first of three mass graves, and for a long while, he would be a gravedigger for the cartels.
He would wrap the daily deposits in plastic and take them to what was supposed to be their final resting place. After a couple of years, he had deposited approximately 500 bodies on the outskirts of town.
Those three graves are but a drop in what’s considered to be a bucket full of hidden cemeteries located throughout the country.
In Sinaloa, 1,100 of them have been found over the past 10 years. That averages out to about 100 or so annually. This year, as of August, 71 hidden graves have been found in Sinaloa, a figure that puts it in 2nd place. 1st place is shared by Colima and Veracruz, where authorities have documented the existence of 96 fosas.
What this all means is there are literally countless uncounted homicides throughout the country, making the official murder stats inaccurate. Put simply: Impunity is even higher than the stats show.
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