It was a typical balmy evening just over a year ago when Abel Paz Enciso wrapped up a class in his dance studio and headed off from San Antonio Tlayacapan to meet up with pals at the Ajijic Malecon.
Biding his mom and dad a casual farewell, he drove off into the night, never to return.
It was May 3, 2012. Around 11:30 p.m. the carefree young man’s mother Maria dialed up his cell phone number to check in. That call and several more placed over the next few hours went unanswered. “I had a bad premonition,” Maria recalls. “He always answered or quickly returned my calls.”
Consumed by worry, she and husband Mario Paz, proprietor of a popular San Antonio eatery, ventured out to look for their only child. They found his car parked at Ajijic’s waterfront park, the phone stashed inside. But there was no sign of Abel, nor his close friends, cousins Gustavo Daniel Martinez Perez and Carlos Jesus Martinez Delgado. The dance teacher, age 25, soon-to-be high grad, 18, and 21-year-old engineering student had vanished without a trace.
The families of the three youths endured days of anguish before news broke early on May 9 telling of 18 brutally butchered bodies that had been discovered inside two vehicles abandoned just off the Chapala-Guadalajara highway near the Ocotlan turnoff. By 9 p.m. that night, Mario was at the Guadalajara city morgue undertaking the gruesome task of identifying his precious son’s remains.At 4 a.m. the following day, Abel finally arrived home in a closed casket. Staff at the morgue had said the body was in no condition to hold up for the traditional overnight velorio (wake). So he was laid to rest in the San Antonio cemetery that very afternoon.
The Paz-Enciso clan experienced a unique, though hardly solitary tragedy. Their grief was shared by friends, school chums, dance students, business clients and the entire village.
And similarly painful scenarios were starting to play out in neighboring communities as the other bodies were identified and buried over the following days and weeks.
Among the dead: the two Martinez cousins abducted along with Abel and Jose Sanchez Agraz, all from Ajijic; Jonathan Daniel Martinez Rios, 17, Miguel Angel Mata Barragan, 25, and Juan Luis Sandoval Camarena, 26, work companions from Chapala; Juan Manuel Reyes Lango, 46, Blanca Liliana Toro Verdia, 17, her brother Armando Daniel Toro Verdia, 25, and their cousin Pedro Isai del Toro Calvario, 15, of San Juan Cosala; Francisco Javier Torres Lopez, 56, Miguel Angel Leal Nava, 17, Jose Miguel Rubio Sanchez, 31, of Jocotepec; Julio Cesar Arana Aceves, 25 and Humberto Centeno Sanchez, 25, of San Luis Soyotlan; Elias Flores Hernandez, a bricklayer from Guadalajara employed at lakeside; and one more soul whose name, close of kin and home town remain unknown.
These were ordinary people, students and working folks who were apparently snatched at random by heartless criminals. All disappeared between April 20 and May 6, innocent victims meeting cruel fate for being in the wrong place at the wrong time as they went about their daily lives.
Mario Paz qualifies the May 9 massacre as the darkest page in lakeside history. It occurred at the crest of a wave of violence that had gradually churned up over the previous year and a half. Late night shootouts and a series of bloody murders were omens of what was brewing on the horizon.
In the aftermath, the entire lakeshore region fell under a pall of fear and apprehension. Local streets were deserted after dark as terrified residents hunkered down behind closed doors. Intense police activity throughout the community did little to quell the collective psychosis that held the populace in its grip.
State investigators quickly detected several local criminal hideouts, finding large caches of weaponry and telltale signs of the killings and grisly dismemberment of the corpses, but none of the culprits. A number of suspects allegedly linked to the mass murder have since been detained in other parts, but there are no official reports indicating that any of them has been formally charged in the case.
Families of the victims don’t trust the police and harbor no faith that justice will ever be served. Abel’s father says he and wife have received counseling from psychologists employed by the state, but they have never been contacted by officials handling the case. He is hesitant to press them for action out of fear of reprisals. “What difference would that make anyway? They’re not going to bring back my son,” he muses glumly as tears well up in his spouse’s eyes.
Mario and Maria have stoically muddled through a year of heart break, focusing on running their business to bury their grief. They are immensely grateful to everyone who has helped buck them up with moral and financial support, making special mention of the kindness and consideration displayed by expatriate customers.
To mark the first anniversary of their son’s death, the couple organized a memorial service May 9 at the San Antonio church in a tribute dedicated to all the massacre victims. Afterwards, many of Abel’s dance students and companions from the University of Guadalajara School of Performing Arts put on a festive music and dance show at the town plaza. In typical Mexican fashion, bereavement was wrapped in a celebration for lives lost by misfortune.