REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Authorities in this border state will be using three new dogs trained to find bodies and clandestine graves. The acquisition follows years of cartel violence with thousands of kidnapping victims whom were never recovered and are presumed dead.
The Tamaulipas government received three Belgian Malinois from the Merida Initiative, a U.S. program to help Mexico improve security conditions. Named Ian, Vonda, and Drago, the dogs are trained to search for human remains and will be assigned to the attorney general’s office as part of the missing person’s unit.
For years, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas–the leading drug trafficking organizations in the state–were behind thousands of murders and kidnap jobs as part of their ongoing turf war. Forcefully sequestered victims were often killed before demanded ransoms could be paid.
To hide the escalating number of bodies, cartel gunmen set up clandestine incineration operations and used shallow graves in rural areas. In September, Breitbart Texas reported exclusively on a Gulf Cartel mass grave in the border city of Rio Bravo, immediately south of Donna, Texas, where gunmen dumped several bodies.
Mass graves tactics are not new in the cartel wars. In 2011, Los Zetas murdered at least 193 and buried their bodies in 47 graves near San Fernando, Tamaulipas. The true number of missing victims remains unclear.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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