A man arrested by Mexican federal police in Tijuana Jan. 22 says he disposed of 300 bodies for a narco gang over the past decade by dissolving them in chemicals. Santiago Meza López said he was paid $600 a week to dissolve victims' bodies in caustic soda. He went by the moniker "El Pozolero del Teo" (Teo's Stew-Maker), an evident reference to Teodoro García Simental, a former kingpin of the Tijuana Cartel [2] who defected last year to the rival Sinaloa Cartel [3], sparking a bloody turf war. Over 700 were killed in Tijuana in 2008. "They brought me the bodies and I just got rid of them," Meza, named as 20 on the US FBI's "Most Wanted" list, told journalists at a construction site where he disposed of the bodies over a 10-year period. "I didn't feel anything."
On Jan. 23 in Celaya, Guanajuato [4], two human heads were found in coolers left outside police stations with notes threatening allies of "La Familia [3]" drug cartel, and signed by Los Zetas, paramilitary arm of the Gulf Cartel [5]. (BBC News [6], El Universal [7], Jan. 24, El Universal [8], Jan. 24) Another three heads were found in a cooler in a drainage canal 30 kilometers south of Ciudad Juárez [3] Jan. 20. The local prosecutor's office says the heads have not been identified, but six police officers are missing. That same day, a headless body was found in the outlying district of Ejido Juárez. A severely tortured body with a gunshot blast to the face was found in the city's Rosita district. (El Mexicano [9], Jan. 23; The Scotsman [10], Jan. 22; Milenio [11], Jan. 20)
See our last posts on Mexico [12] and the narco wars [13].
