Nine bodies were found dumped on two busy roads in the notoriously violent city of Fresnillo general secretary of the Zacatecas government confirmed the discovery in an early-morning post to his Facebook page noting that “messages directed toward an opposing [criminal] group” were found with the bodies Reyes said that “investigative authorities” had reached the points where the bodies were located He noted that “the situation is reported as stable Reyes also noted that two highway blockades were reported in the early hours of Tuesday while the other was in General Pánfilo Natera located further east of the capital on the border with the state of San Luis Potosí Reyes said that security forces were present at both points where presumed criminals had set up fiery blockades He reported that the situation had been brought under control The discovery of the bodies in Fresnillo on Tuesday morning came after the arrest of 26 members of the Sinaloa Cartel in Zacatecas over the past two days The cartel responded to those detentions by setting vehicles on fire to create highway blockades in 10 Zacatecas municipalities on Monday Referring to the murders of nine people and the latest highway blockades Reyes said that the arrests had “provoked new reactions” from “a criminal group.” He also said that the state government and “all the institutions that make up the committee for the construction of peace remain firm” in their commitment to “the process of pacification.” “We ask society to stay calm and consult official sources of information,” Reyes added According to the results of the latest National Survey of Urban Public Security 95.4% of Fresnillo residents believe that the city is unsafe to live in Located about 60 kilometers north of Zacatecas city Fresnillo is the only city in Mexico where more than 90% of residents feel unsafe In 2023, Zacatecas was the 11th most violent state in Mexico in terms of total homicides, with 977 murders, according to data presented by the federal government in January With reports from Reforma, El Universal and Milenio ADVERTISE WITH MND COMMUNITY GUIDELINES Subscription FAQ's Privacy Policy Mexico News Daily - Property of Tavana LLC At least 18 homicides were recorded in Zacatecas on Saturday the highest daily count for murders for any state so far this year Ten bodies were found on the street in Fresnillo six more were discovered in a warehouse in General Pánfilo Natera and murders were perpetrated in at least two other municipalities Criminal groups are believed responsible for most if not all the homicides The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are engaged in a turf war in Zacatecas situated on a drug trafficking route between Pacific coast ports and Mexico’s northeastern border with the United States Residents of a community on the eastern side of Fresnillo – one of Mexico’s most violent cities – discovered 10 bodies wrapped in blankets and electrical tape early Saturday morning The corpses were dumped on a road by armed men in pickup trucks Federal and state security forces attended the crime scene and cordoned off the area Some of the victims appeared to have been tortured before they were killed The bodies were taken to a morgue where forensic tests were to be undertaken to determine the cause of death and identity of the victims No arrests were reported in connection with the homicides and dumping of the bodies the cadavers of six men were found hanging in a warehouse located between the communities of San Pablo and Santa Elena in General Pánfilo Natera a municipality about 50 kilometers east of Zacatecas city on the border with San Luis Potosí Zacatecas Attorney General Francisco Murillo Ruiseco said there could be a link between those murders and the arrest in the municipality of Ojocaliente last Friday of two people traveling in a vehicle with a person they had abducted Adding to the grim news out of Zacatecas was the murder of a man in Guadalupe The victim was shot dead in the center of the city a taxi driver was killed in an armed attack in the municipality of Calera on Saturday night The grisly discoveries and murders came after an upholsterer was shot and killed in his Guadalupe shop on Friday night Saturday’s homicide count was two higher than the 16 people murdered in México state on January 24 Homicides have also increased in Michoacán since a new security plan was announced last October whereas Jalisco and Guanajuato – both of which border Zacatecas and Michoacán and neither of which received additional federal support in late 2021 – have recorded declines in murders in recent months Zacatecas Governor David Monreal said Saturday that the implementation of the support plan had “generated an escalation in violence … between criminal groups that unfortunately has caused human losses such as those … in the municipalities of Fresnillo and Pánfilo Natera.” he expressed confidence that peace will be achieved “sooner or later” in Zacatecas Mexico’s eighth most violent state in 2021 with over 1,600 homicides “I sincerely hope that it will be sooner rather than later,” said Monreal who took office for the ruling Morena party last September Monreal called on residents to trust his government declaring that it would never give up in the fight against organized crime and continue “acting with responsibility and a lot of strength.” President López Obrador responded to the incident on Monday calling it an “act of provocation” directed at the government by criminals “[Security] will be strengthened… and lots of intelligence Sometimes intelligence is more important than the presence of troops,” the president said Writing in the newspaper El Universal security analyst Alejandro Hope asserted that reducing deadly violence in Zacatecas in a sustained way will not be possible “if the federal presence is not accompanied by a strengthening of local police forces and the building of criminal investigation capacities.” nothing indicates that they’re heading in that direction having more tragic days like Saturday in the near future shouldn’t come as a surprise,” he wrote Villa Slain; Shot 16 TimesEl Paso TimesJuly 21 DESERTERS FROM BODYGUARD AMBUSH PARTY IN AUTOMOBILE; MIGUEL TRILLO AMONG KILLED Private Secretary and Members of Guard on Way to Canutillo Ranch When Attacked by Assassins Rosalio Morales one Villa guard and a bystander whose name was not ascertained Villa and his party were leaving Parral for the Villa ranch at Canutillo when they were attacked in the outskirts of the town between the Guanajuato bridge and the home of J.C general manager of the Parral and Durango railroad Villa was at the steering wheel of his automobile being wounded four times in the head and 12 times in the body The assassinations numbered seven men and are said to have been deserters from Villa’s personal body guard They were concealed in a house awaiting the Villa car The attacking party was armed with .30-.30 rifles General Villa and this party were unable to defend themselves following the attack which lasted but a few minutes The attack occurred shortly before 8 o’clock commander of the northern military zone assumed personal command of a column of troops sent to Parral yesterday as soon as word was received of General Villa’s assassination and advice received last night in Juarez were to the effect that three of the slayers had been captured It was announced that the bodies of Villa and Trillo would be taken to Chihuahua City for burial President Obregon was in communication with General Martinez yesterday and last night and urged the general to make every endeavor to bring the assassins to justice federal stamp tax collector in Juarez and a former officer in the Villa army; Col expressed the belief that the assassins will be captured or killed Political reasons were advanced in Juarez as the cause of the attack Federal troops were sent from Chihuahua City to the Villa ranch at Canutillo in anticipation of possible discorders at the ranch An unsuccessful attempt was made on the life of Villa in February 1922 as the part of a revolutionary plot that failed with the first expedition sent into Chihuahua from El Paso Three men were sent to Canutillo to enlist Villa’s aid If he refused they were instructed to shoot him Enemies of the Obregon government and other political exiles readily agreed that Villa would be a stumbling block in the path of any revolutionary movement that might be launched in the southern republic Villa was discussed at a revolutionary junta held at Gomez Palacio Whether his death was an indirect result of the meeting was one of the questions authorities were probing last night guerrilla chieftain and bandit leader in Mexico for more than 10 years declared that he had ended his career of outlawry in August the remnant of what had once been his army of 25,000 men announced the intention of himself and men of accepting amnesty and settling down as farmers Villa had surrendered to federal forces at Sabinal He then declared his adherence to provisional President De la Huerta and Gen later elected president to succeeded Carranza Villa demanded and was granted by the Mexican government one year’s pay and a small farm for each of his men One of the most notable escapades of Villa was his raid on Columbus in which he and his followers killed 17 Americans It resulted in a punitive American military expedition under General Pershing crossing the border and maintaining a “dead or alive” pursuit of Villa which lasted more than nine months and cost the United Stated government American troops were ambuscaded and a number of them killed the bandit’s followers were defeated at Guerrero The Americans were successful in a number of other skirmishes and penetrated so far south into Mexico as to meet the constitutional troops of Carranza were also in pursuit of the renegade Mexican leader lived in a Chihuahua mountain cave for five weeks It was located in the center of a perpendicular cliff which rose 150 feet from a brook on the level plain below and from this point Villa said he often watched the American troops Upon the American army’s withdrawal from Mexico he was indicted for first degree murder at Deming “They call me a bandit and the worst man in Mexico,” declared Villa when he was welcomed to San Pedro “but I would preserve our nationality I surrendered because further fighting in Mexico meant intervention by the United States In a manifesto he praised the “good faith honor and patriotism” of Provisional President De la Huerta and declared it was his purpose to show the Mexican nation that he and his men could “build as well as destroy.” The former bandit went with his family from San Pedro to Las Nievas to “settle down” on his farm there and shortly after wrote to De la Huerta for school books and supplies Villa was said to have been deeply affected by the death of a daughter in San Antonio Sixteen of his men who were among a number captured by Pershing and convicted of various offenses were pardoned by the governor of New Mexico in November The first real tragedy in Villa’s life occurred when General Felipe Angeles was executed as a revolutionist by Carranza troops in 1919 Villa admired Angeles not only as a patriot and soldier He wept bitterly when he received word that Angeles had been shot He threatened reprisals and later sided in the overthrow of the Carranza regime Villa’s real name was Doreteo Orango He was born in 1863 of peon parentage in the little mining town of Las Nievas As a youth he followed the trade of a butcher until the death of his father and then he and his mother and sister went to western Chihuahua Many stories are told of his first clash with the laws of Mexico but the one most frequently related is that a captain in one of President Diaz regiments won the heart of his sister and eloped with her without the formality of a marriage forced his newly acquired brother-in-law to sign his own death certificate and dig his own grave and Villa gathered about him a band of fellow transgressors and became a terror to the well-to-do of northern Chihuahua laughing at the attempts of federal troops and rurales to capture him The spoils his hand acquired from the rich land-owners and mining men were frequently shared with the poor peons and he never lacked friendly warning when the officers of the law spread their traps for him At the time of the Madero revolution against Diaz in 1910 Villa joined the ill-fated revolutionary leader and did yeoman services with his hand in the fighting about Juarez He accompanied Madero to Mexico City but later returned to Chihuahua When Madero sent General Victoriano Huerta in the north to break the Orozco rebellion Each was intolerant of the other and Huerta finally had Villa arrested at Bachimba and condemned to death by a military court for insubordination had this sentence commuted to imprisonment in the penitentiary at Mexico City While confined there Villa taught himself to read and write He then escaped and sought refuge in El Paso When Huerta declared himself dictator after Madero’s death in 1913 and Carranza raised the banner of revolt in Coahulia Villa again crossed the border to take a hand against his old-time enemy In the more than a year he held power of life and death over a victorious army of 25,000 men and fully armed and equipped with artillery and possessed a war chest of several million dollars filled by the seizure and confiscation of cotton The larger part of his equipment he captured from the enemy flocked to his standard and he dealt blow after blow at the disorganized federal forces Over 4,000 men and eight generals of the federal army took refuge in the United States and were interned after Villa’s victory at Ojinaga He followed this success by a desperate attack upon Torreon The federal forces were still more decisively defeated at San Pedro de las Colonias cut off the federal troop trains and captured large quantities of supplies The remaining federal retreated to Saltillo but could not be made to face Villa’s dreaded attack and that city was evacuated before his approach This campaign cleared the federals out of the north of Mexico with the exception of Zacatecas City and gave Villa virtual control of more than half of Mexico He returned to Torreon and Chihuahua to rest and recruit in June 1914 and at this time came the first open break between him and Carranza Although Villa had been one of the independent chiefs who met and formulated the plan of Guadalupe which made Carranza first chief of the constitutionalist forces A previous break narrowly was averted while both were in Chihuahua City in May placed under arrest and executed at sunrise In connection with the seizures by Chao of certain property Carranza learned of the danger to his friend Chao but a few hours before the time of execution He sent his auto for Villa to come to the palace at 4 o’clock in the morning succeeded in getting Villa into the car alone and took him to the palace without his usual bodyguard – Colonel (then Major) Fierro called “the butcher.” Whatever pressure was brought to bear by Carranza Chao’s life was saved and Villa appeared with his arm about Chao at the triumphal entry of the first chief into Torreon and in July of the same year the trouble again broke out which was heavily fortified an strongly defended but not attack until reinforce by Villa’s men the plan being to bring so large a force to bear as to force surrender without a fight desperately anxious to have the credit of taking the town misled Carranza as to the number of the garrison and tried to take the town by assault cost him nearly half his force in killed and wounded and he was repulsed saying Natera had gotten himself into trouble and could get himself out but who was acting as chief of artillery for Villa An immediate clash between the Carranza forces under Gen but a commission of prominent men of both sides met at Torreon and sided by representatives of the United States state department When Carranza waited at Tiannapantia to make his triumphal entry into Mexico City it was announced that Villa and his troops would take part but two days before the first chief entered the capital Villa turned back to Torreon and from that time there was open war between the two men Villa in conjunction with Zapata dominated the convention at Agucallentes to determine on a provisional president and the procedure of the temporary government Eullalo Gutierrez was named provisional president but Carranza refused to recognize the action of the convention Villa and Zapata forces occupied Mexico City only to leave it as provisions grew low Zapata retired to his strong-holds in Morelos and Villa turned back to the north Gutierrez was cast aside for another figurehead and Villa marshaled his forces to meet the Carranza troops under Gen Villa up to that time had never lost a battle in which he was in personal command but whose success in the west had equaled Villa’s in the north Irapuato and Silao he defeated the former bandit In those battles Obregon lost his arm and Villa lost his grip on his men He retreated northward of his old headquarters at Torreon but dared not risk a battle even in that stronghold One disaster followed another and he retreated across the mountain to Harry Sonora in company with the Yaqui chieftain Urbalejo he marched north in an effort to seize Agua Prieta border port through which he helped to get arms and supplies Just previously the United States had recognized the Carranza government but Villa did not know this fact until he reached the border and found a strong force of American troops drawn up along the border with orders to prevent an attack from a quarter which would endanger American citizens on their own side of the line Villa made his attack but was beaten off by General Calles and the Agua Prieta garrison Again he turned south only to meet General Dieguez advancing from Hermosillo Caught between two fires he turned back to his own country There the defections from his ranks continued General Angeles and Governor Maytorena already had left his standard and nearly all the generals and men of his command followed suit accepting amnesty of Carranza and surrendering their arms Villa sent his wife across the border and with but a few hundred men sought the mountains Looting ranchers for horses and provisions he gathered about him scattered members of his former army Hunted closely by the Carranza troops under General Luis Herrera it was rumored that he was approaching the border in the hope of escaping to the United States and justifying his course with the authorities at Washington Then came the most widely daring act of his reckless career and its garrison of three troops of American cavalry resulting in the dispatch of United States soldiers For a time he was almost an idol for his men and ruled them by an odd mixture of love and fear Most of the songs sung about Mexican campfires had him for their hero and his soldiers were proud to brag that they were of Villa’s “gente,” his feudal subjects None who saw him lead his men into battle could doubt he was a leader of men When he crammed a peon’s straw sombrero on the back of his head filled the front of his shirt with grenades made of eight-inch pieces of gas pipe and stick of dynamite and yelled “Undule muchachos” (“Hurry perhaps none the less eagerly from the knowledge that a firing squad in the rear had orders to shoot the first man who falters By some he was accounted a military genius but by many credit for the strategy and tactics displayed in his campaigns is given to General Felipe Angeles none questioned his ability to carry out the plans The one vice he could not tolerate was drunkenness His camps were models of sobriety although at times it required a row of dead bodies lying before a wall to make them so It is related by some of his men that they have seen Colonel Fierro his bodyguard and one of those closer to him beg on his knees for his life when he had neglected some order because of insobriety Nothing so delighted him as to “throw a scare” into his men He would call them up for some dereliction of duty tongue-lash them until they expected nothing less than instant execution whack them across the back with the flat of his sword and then grin Three teenage boys have been arrested in the rape and strangulation slaying of a 13-year-old Juárez girl found dumped in a vacant lot The case has led to calls for "Justicia para Rosita" (Justice for Rosita) and renewed condemnation of violence against women in a city with a history of femicides identified in news accounts as Rosa Isabel Muñoz Campos 30 in a trash heap in a vacant lot in the Pánfilo Natera area near the mountain of western Juárez More: Caravan protests violence against women in Juárez are accused of sexually assaulting and strangling her at a home before dumping her body the Chihuahua attorney general's office said in a statement They are being held at a juvenile detention facility The girl's death is one of more than 1,000 homicides in Juárez this year Mexican federal agents arrested a former Juárez municipal police commander and eight officers during a series of house raids last week, officials said the former head of the police intelligence unit and other officers are accused of organized crime and kidnapping charges Mexico's attorney general's office stated that the case is linked to the abduction of four adults and four children in Juárez last April. Following an investigation arrest warrants were issued by a federal judge based in Hermosillo Sáenz had been given paid disability leave a couple of months ago federal agents backed by army soldiers arrested Sáenz six other men and two women during raids at their homes Borderland: 'The worst it's ever been.' Retired El Paso DEA leader gives somber view of drug problem Juárez Mayor Cruz Pérez Cuéllar who took office last month, expressed support for the investigation pointing out that the alleged incident occurred during the previous administration Juárez police Chief Cesar Omar Muñoz Morales on Monday ordered a freeze to any activities by the police intelligence group amid an internal investigation, the Norte Digital news website reported Mexican National Guard troops and customs officers arrested one person after intercepting a cache of firearms found in a car coming from El Paso at the Bridge of the Americas The car with Texas plates was picked for inspection by the automated selection system at the international bridge soldiers spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the end of a long cardboard box on the back seat More: Mexico and US prepare for security talks More: Mexico sues US gun-makers over arms-traffic toll, ties 17,000 deaths to smuggled firearms The name of the person arrested was not disclosed The date of the weapons seizure was not disclosed Daniel Borunda may be reached at 915-546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes.com; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter Chihuahua state investigators made arrests in connection with several homicides in Juárez including a man suspected of taking part in the killing of four women more than 20 years ago was arrested Thursday on homicide charges in connection with the deaths of Silvia Rivera Morales Olga Alicia Carrillo Perez and two unidentified women whose bodies were found in September 1995 Rivera was a 17-year-old student whose mutilated body was found dumped in the Lote Bravo The bodies of several other young women were found at the same site was working at a shoe store and saving to go to college when she disappeared in downtown Juárez in August 1995 a month before her mutilated body was found with a broken neck multiple stab wounds and signs that she had been sexually assaulted Authorities did not release information on what led investigators to the arrest last week in the deaths which were part of the wave of "femicides" cases in Juárez in the 1990s The suspect's full name was withheld by Mexican authorities because of rules regarding the release of the names and photos of crime suspects state investigators arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of shooting at a van and killing two brothers and wounding two women at a Juárez intersection on the night of Dec the Chihuahua attorney general's office said Tuesday The victims were in a Honda Odyssey when they were shot at Telegrafistas and Electricistas streets in north Juárez across the border from Ascarate Park in El Paso Ramon and Edgar Sepulveda died after arriving at a hospital A possible motive for the shooting was not disclosed alias "El Smack," was arrested on drug charges and has been jailed awaiting possible homicide and attempted homicide charges Slain women identifiedThe Chihuahua state attorney general's office has identified two women killed in separate cases last month Nancy Sarahi Reyes Ramos, 21, was found dead in a vacant lot on Christmas Day Authorities had previously said that she had stab wounds to her neck 26 on Panfilo Natera street in central Juárez Two men convicted of killing a Juárez police officer in 2013 were sentenced to 50 years in prison last week were convicted in the fatal shooting of Samuel Humberto Valenzuela Holguin at a pharmacy on July 10 They were also ordered to pay for than a million pesos in damages Daniel Borunda may be reached at 546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes.com; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.