Mexicans outraged after officials leave trailer full of corpses on outskirts of city

Locals in Guadalajara complained after they noticed the trailer’s stench following wave of violence that overwhelmed morgues 
Mexico’s homicide rate hit a record high in 2017 with 29,168 murders registered. The country recorded 2,599 homicides in July 2018, its most murderous month since 1997, when Mexico started keeping such statistics.
 Mexico’s homicide rate hit a record high in 2017 with 29,168 murders registered. July 2018 was its most murderous month since 1997, when statistics began. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

Mexicans have reacted with outrage after authorities in the western state of Jalisco left a trailer full of decomposing corpses on the outskirts of Mexico’s second-largest city following a wave of violence which overwhelmed local morgues.
Locals in the Guadalajara suburb of Tlajomulco complained to police after they were alerted to the presence of the trailer by the stench.
“This affects our kids, it smells horrible and the longer it stays it’s going to stink even worse,” Patricia Jiménez told Reuters.
It soon emerged that the trailer had previously been parked by officials in the suburb of Tlaquepaque, but was moved on orders of the mayor.
It has now been moved to an industrial area near the state attorney general’s office, according to news reports.
The Jalisco state attorney general’s office has not commented, but an official in the office said the trailer was properly refrigerated and never “abandoned”.
The office also disputed press reports the trailer contained 157 corpses, with sources telling local media the number was closer to 100.
Jalisco’s general secretary Roberto López told local media that the state’s morgue had been overwhelmed by a surge in deaths, adding that a new morgue should be finished in a month and a half. “When it is built, these bodies will be transferred,” he said.
The row over the trailer – which erupted as the country celebrated its national day on Sunday – was yet another reminder of the grim toll from the country’s decade-long drug war.
Mexico’s homicide rate hit a record high in 2017 with 29,168 murders registered. The country recorded 2,599 homicides in July 2018, its most murderous month since 1997, when Mexico started keeping such statistics.
It was not the first time that the bloodletting has been so severe that local morgues have run out of space – similar incidents have occurred in the opium heartlands of Guerrero.


But the gruesome episode in Guadalajara has underlined how violence has spread to all corners of the country. The surrounding Jalisco state has deteriorated rapidly in recent months: 15 people were injured in May when a gun battle erupted in the city centre after a brazen assassination attempt on the state’s employment secretary.
In March, three film students in the Guadalajara suburb of Tonalá disappeared after unwittingly filming property associated with a drug trafficker when they were working on a college project.
Much of the violence in the region is the work of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) which has disputed territories across the country – especially those controlled by the rival Sinaloa Cartel, whose former leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was extradited to the United States last year.
More recently, CJNG has itself splintered into rival factions. In July, US and Mexican officials announced that had raised the reward to $1.56m for information leading to the arrest of the CJNG boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”.