One of the darkest criminal chapters in Mexican history came to an end yesterday with the installation of a memorial dedicated to the victims of Santiago “El Pozolero” Meza López, who was employed by drug cartels to dispose of bodies by dissolving them in lye.

Meza’s grisly activities were conducted over a nine-year period on a piece of land known as La Gallera, in the ejido, or communal lands, of Maclovio Rojas, located in the La Presa district of Tijuana, Baja California.

Hundreds of bodies are believed to have been disposed of by Meza’s hand.

Yesterday, several plaques with the names of people missing in the state since 1984 were installed on two perimeter walls on the property by an advocacy organization for missing persons.

The dedication ceremony coincided with the International Day of the Disappeared and was attended by relatives of the missing, who mounted signs with the names and photos of their loved ones.

Many of the names were read aloud during the ceremony, after which a Catholic priest blessed a new chapel adjoining La Gallera.

Rocío Castel was one of the family members who attended. She recalled that after one of her sons disappeared, she “forgot to live, and I forgot I had other children, I forgot about everything . . . I only wanted the one who had gone missing,” she told the newspaper Milenio.

“I then realized my other children were dying, I no longer hugged them or asked them to cry with me. It was then that I decided to do something and I understood that I wasn’t effecting any change by putting my life on standby,” she added.

State Interior Secretary Francisco Rueda Gómez pledged that the government would not leave the relatives of the disappeared alone, and that a commission will be created to search for the missing.

Meza was captured in 2009, after which details about his activities began to come out.

Source: Milenio (sp)