Guanajuato violence: heads and headless bodies in 4 municipalities

October 5, 2020

It was a bloody weekend in Guanajuato where body parts were deposited in public places in cities throughout the southern half of the state.

The remains were left in bags, boxes or simply on the side of the road in the municipalities of Celaya, Salamanca, Salvatierra, and Romita. They were found in public squares, in front of churches and open-air markets, and in abandoned lots and cemeteries.

The latest discovery occurred around 6 a.m. Monday in Celaya. The newspaper Periódico Correo reported that the remains of an unknown number of bodies were discovered in plastic bags, flour sacks, and wooden boxes dumped together in plain sight in front of the El Dorado market in the Aurora neighborhood.

Sunday morning also yielded similarly grisly discoveries: around dawn, El Universal reported, a human head was left outside a DIF family service agency building in Celaya, and the body of another person was discovered a few blocks away.

Meanwhile, in Salamanca, authorities discovered a human head left in a plastic bag. Around the same time early Sunday morning, three heads and three decapitated bodies were found along different stretches of the Romita–Puerto Interior highway.

On Saturday, a scrap collector in Celaya alerted authorities to two heads and other parts he found inside garbage bags in an abandoned lot. Meanwhile, in Salvatierra, authorities found a dismembered body in the Santo Tomás Huatzindeo Cemetery, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.

In Celaya on Friday, authorities found a bag with a head and torso as well as the body of a decapitated woman killed execution style in front of a church in the main square. The latter was found in the community of Juan Martín, where, according to local media, a male youth had been shot to death just the day before, his body also left in the main square with written threats to what appeared to be a criminal organization.