Cancun (Puerto Vallarta Daily News) – Authorities in the popular Mexican resort city of Cancun announced on Tuesday that they are working to identify eight bodies found in various locations throughout the area. The gruesome discovery marks a concerning development for a region that has long been considered the crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry.
Oscar Montes de Oca, the head prosecutor of Quintana Roo, the Caribbean coast state where Cancun is located, has promised to conduct more searches and identifications in response to the discovery. Over the weekend, police searched wooded lots and sinkhole ponds known as cenotes, leading to the recovery of the bodies.
Mexico has more than 112,000 people listed as missing, and searches for clandestine grave sites have become commonplace throughout the country. The recent events in Cancun represent a significant shift, as the city’s thriving tourism industry has typically been insulated from such incidents.
Drug cartels are known to use hidden body dumping grounds to dispose of their victims, and several groups are currently vying for control of the lucrative retail drug trade along the Caribbean coast. Montes de Oca reported that five of the bodies were discovered at an abandoned construction site, with three already identified as people who had previously been reported missing.
Three sets of skeletal remains were found at another site in a wooded area on the outskirts of Cancun. These have yet to be identified. The bodies were discovered in a poor neighborhood approximately 10 miles (15 kilometers) from the famous beach and hotel zone, but relatively closer to the resort’s airport.
Similar searches took place in the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, located south of Tulum. Volunteer searchers, including relatives of missing people, as well as specially trained dogs, joined investigators in the search efforts.
Feuding drug gangs have generated a surge of violence in Cancun and the resort-studded Caribbean coast to the south. Earlier this month, four men were killed in a drug gang-related dispute in Cancun’s hotel zone, close to the beach. In March, a U.S. tourist was shot in the leg in the nearby town of Puerto Morelos, prompting the U.S. State Department to issue a travel alert for the region.
In 2022, two Canadians were killed in Playa del Carmen, presumably over debts between international drug and weapons trafficking gangs. In Tulum, in 2021, two tourists—a California travel blogger born in India and a German national—were killed after being caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival drug dealers. The escalating violence is a worrying trend for the region that relies heavily on tourism revenue.
Cancun (Puerto Vallarta Daily News) - Authorities in the popular Mexican resort city of Cancun announced on Tuesday that they are working to identify eight . . .
