As applause rang out at a nearby international arts festival, Bibiana Mendoza unearthed human remains from a clandestine grave in a Mexican region where prosperity, culture and cartel violence converge, IgbereTV reports
The 32-year-old woman, who is looking for her missing brother, arrived at the site in the town of Irapuato in Guanajuato state after residents reported seeing a dog carrying a human hand in its mouth.
“While people from all over the world were celebrating the Cervantino festival, we were digging up bodies, and at the same time I thought it was useless because they were burying more people elsewhere,” said Mendoza, founder of a women’s collective searching for missing persons.
Since that day in late October, they and a group of forensic experts have exhumed 53 bags of remains that the authorities are trying to identify, Mendoza said.
Around 300 victims of gang violence have been found dead in similar circumstances in recent months in Guanajuato, an industrial hub home to factories of foreign auto giants.
Irapuato, located one hour from the Guanajuato state capital, ranks number two among Mexican municipalities where people feel the most unsafe, according to official data.
Cartel turf wars have given Guanajuato the unenviable title of Mexico’s most violent state, with more than 2,400 murders from January to September of this year — almost 10 percent of the national total.
Nearly 3,000 more people disappeared in the same period.
Despite the bloodshed, the once-peaceful state, home to 6.1 million people, is a major tourist destination.
Its colonial-style capital as well as the picturesque city of San Miguel de Allende attract thousands of foreigners each year
