Guatemalan authorities said Tuesday that five migrants survived the Jan. 22 massacre of 19 people, including 16 Guatemalans, in northern Mexico.
Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo said the five are being interviewed about the killings, whose motive still remains unclear.
The migrants were being taken toward the U.S. border by people smugglers when one or two of the trucks came under fire, apparently from a state police unit.
Adriana Mejia, a cousin of Guatemalan migrant Santa Cristina Garcia Perez, carries her daughter down a narrow path to her family's house in Comitancillo, Guatemala, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021. Relatives say they believe the charred corpses found in a northern Mexico border state on Saturday could be those of their loved ones. The country's Foreign Ministry said it was collecting DNA samples from a dozen relatives to see if there was a match with any of the bodies. (AP PhotoOliver de Ros)
But it was unclear whether the survivors had been close enough in the convoy to shed light on why police would have killed the migrants along with two armed smugglers' guards.
A dozen state police officers have been charged in the killings in the township of Camargo. Two trucks were set on fire and the victims' bodies were so badly charred that identification has taken weeks. The bodies of 16 Guatemalans and two Mexicans have been identified; the 19th body is still undergoing tests.
Brolo said the 16 bodies identified so far are expected to be returned to Guatemala around March 19. Mexican authorities asked for enough time to conduct forensic tests to strengthen their case.
The killings revived memories of the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants near the town of San Fernando in the same gang-ridden border state of Tamaulipas. Those killings were done by a drug cartel, while the Jan. 22 slayings allegedly were carried out by law enforcement.
But the two cases were similar: The 2010 massacre came to light in part because there were survivors. One, a wounded migrant from Ecuador who played dead, managed to make it to a military checkpoint.
Officials later said those migrants were killed after refusing an offer to work for a drug cartel, information that apparently came from the survivors.
Cartels in Mexico often charge migrant smugglers for crossing their territory and kidnap or kill migrants whose smugglers have paid a rival gang. Camargo is in an area that has been bloodied for years by turf battles between the remnants of the Gulf cartel and the old Zetas cartel.
Some of the relatives of the Guatemalan migrants killed on Jan. 22 told of receiving calls from the migrant smuggler who took the group of 10 males and three female north. The smuggler apparently survived, but told them their family members were dead.
The dozen officers charged in the killings were members of a 150-member Tamaulipas state Special Operations Group.
In 2019, prosecutors charged that the same police unit, then operating under a different name, pulled eight people from their homes in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, posed them in clothing and vehicles to make them look like criminals and shot them to death.
Authorities had warning of the problems in the unit, which was created last year from the remains of the special forces group accused of the 2019 killings and other atrocities. A federal legislator even filed a non-binding resolution in Mexico’s Congress in early January to protest beatings and robberies by the unit.
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The aid group Save the Children said there is nothing to support accusations of misconduct, speaking after Guatemalan prosecutors raided its offices in the Central American country looking for evidence of alleged abuse of migrant children.
“We have been shocked and puzzled by the unprecedented search of our offices by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala,” the organization said in a press release Thursday night hours after the raid.
The group said it was not aware of any specific accusations against it.
“We defend the rights of children and adolescents and ensure that they survive, learn and are protected from harm in more than 100 countries around the world,” said the group, which has worked in Guatemala since 1976.
The raid came after prosecutors — themselves accused by the U.S. of corruption and trying to undermine Guatemala’s democracy — claimed Save the Children and a number of other non-governmental groups could “be participating in child trafficking operations.”
Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche said the raid was to search for evidence from a complaint made relating to those claims, which was “transnational and of great importance” because it involves children’s rights.
The escalating controversy began last week when Fox News contributor Sara Carter published a video of Angel Pineda, the secretary general of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, saying it had received a complaint about the organizations. Carter was the first to announce the raid on social media before police and prosecutors had even entered the offices.
In the video, Pineda called not on the Biden administration or other international authorities, but on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to aid him in the investigation.
Paxton, a Republican, has railed against U.S. President Joe Biden's handling of rising migration to the U.S.-Mexico border. In February, he tried to sue a migrant aid group in El Paso, accusing it of “facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.” The effort was blocked by a judge.
“The chaos at the southern border has created an environment where NGOs, funded with taxpayer money from the Biden Administration, facilitate astonishing horrors," Paxton said in a statement.
Those allegations sounded strikingly similar to ones made by Guatemalan prosecutors in a letter sent to Paxton earlier this month.
The Guatemalan government confirmed that the prosecutor’s office contacted Paxton without going through the diplomatic protocols required for international collaboration.
Paxton's office and Guatemala's prosecutor's office did not respond for a request for comment and more information on the case.
The Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office's communication department said Friday that it would not go into details because the case was “related to children and adolescents.”
Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras has faced international criticism for years and has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for purported undemocratic actions. Since Guatemalans elected reform-oriented President Bernardo Arévalo last August, Porras has grown increasingly isolated and her office has attempted to find allies among some far-right U.S. lawmakers.
Both Pineda and Curruchiche are sanctioned and banned from entering more than 40 countries, including the United States and the European Union, for hindering the fight against corruption in Guatemala and undermining the country's democracy. This notably includes failed efforts to prevent Arévalo from taking office earlier this year.
Associated Press correspondent Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Agents from the Attorney General's office leave Save the Children's headquarters after conducting a raid of the installation, in Guatemala City, Thursday, April 25, 2024. The NGO is being investigated for an alleged complaint about the violation of migrant children's rights, according to statements made by prosecutor Rafel Curruchiche. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Police agents stand guard on the perimeters of the Save the Children's headquarters as agents from the Attorney General's office wind up their raid, in Guatemala City, Thursday, April 25, 2024. The NGO is being investigated for an alleged complaint about the violation of migrant children's rights, according to statements made by prosecutor Rafel Curruchiche. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
An agent from the Attorney General's office carries evidence collected at Save the Children's headquarters during a raid, in Guatemala City, Thursday, April 25, 2024. The NGO is being investigated for an alleged complaint about the violation of migrant children's rights, according to statements made by prosecutor Rafel Curruchiche. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
An agent from the Attorney General's office enters Save the Children's headquarters during a raid, in Guatemala City, Thursday, April 25, 2024. The NGO is being investigated for an alleged complaint about the violation of migrant children's rights, according to statements made by prosecutor Rafel Curruchiche. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
