The body of one of 13 state police officers killed in a cartel ambush in Michoacán on Monday was returned to his family wrapped in nothing more than black plastic bags.

María Guadalupe Reyes, mother-in-law of slain officer Juvenal López Castolo, rebuked the Michoacán government for not making the effort to properly prepare the body for the funeral.

Authorities delivered Lopez’s plastic-cloaked body with a state police uniform placed haphazardly over it, she said.

Another relative, Soledad Medina, told the newspaper Milenio that blood and other bodily fluids were leaking out of the plastic into the box in which López was placed.

“. . . Blood was dripping from the head . . . liquid was coming out of the body . . . It’s not right,” she said.

A funeral was held for the 29-year-old victim on Wednesday at a cemetery in Charo, a municipality that borders the state capital Morelia.

Milenio reported that the song Historía de un Policía (Story of a Police Officer) accompanied the funeral procession, its lyrics eerily reminiscent of the fate López and the other slain police officers met at the hands of suspected Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) gunmen.

“Unfortunately, here in my land the damn war has no end. Hooded men, strong and armed . . . ambushed us . . . shot from different sides. They riddled us [with bullets] in seconds,” the song says.

State police deployed to the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán said that before Monday’s attack, CJNG members threatened to retaliate if officers didn’t agree to work for them.

Leading yesterday’s funeral procession was López’s widow and mother of his two daughters, Jazmín Guzmán, who a day earlier confronted Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles at a memorial service in Morelia.

“What’s the use of this [service] if [all] I want is him alive,” she asked.

Source: Milenio (sp)