117 Cadavers Exhumed from Morelos State Mass Grave Used by Authorities RT.com
go to original June 5, 2016

Forensic medical personnel recover a corpse from a mass grave on the third day of work at the cemetry of Tetelcingo, Morelos, Mexico. (Juan Carlos Villamil/AFP)

A heavily-pregnant woman and two children were among the bodies recovered during a fortnight-long excavation of a mass grave, dug up by a morgue in central Mexico, which used it to dispose of bodies it thought would not be claimed by any family members.

The exhumation of 117 bodies – one more than the authorities had counted - in Tetelcingo, in the inland state of Morelos, since May 21 has excited a morbid fascination among Mexicans, and become a lightning rod for government criticism.

Under local legislation, officials are allowed to conduct their own burials, when the deceased person has no contacts, but those in Tetelcingo morgue used the provision to liberally and carelessly dump bodies into a single pit, opened up in 2014, even when family members requested to bury their own dead.

The practice might not have been discovered, if not for the family of Oliver Wenceslao Navarrete, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2013. The government refused to give back his corpse to the relatives, claiming they needed to conduct forensic tests, before interring it without the family’s consent.

Finally, his parents obtained a court order, allowing his body to be recovered in December 2014. To their shock, to get to Navarrete’s body, officials had to dig through a pit, moving dozens of other poorly marked bodies, as they watched.

Navarrete’s family filmed the macabre dig, and the video was published on social media late last year, prompting immediate outrage.



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