More than 1,000 people attended the funerals of three young women who were ambushed and murdered while driving on Highway 23 from the town of Jerez in Zacatecas to their home in Colotlán, Jalisco on December 25.
Late last week, investigators identified the bodies of sisters Viviana and Daniela Márquez Pichardo and their cousin, Paola Vargas, who disappeared along with Daniela’s boyfriend, José Melesio Gutiérrez on Christmas Day.
After finding their car abandoned on a remote road near Tepetongo, Zacatecas, investigators quickly located a shallow grave where the bodies had been buried after being set on fire.
Family members attending the funerals promised they would fight for justice for their relatives.
Because it was so severely burned, the body of Melesio Gutiérrez, who is also a U.S. citizen, was only formally identified as of Wednesday this week.
Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega, the archbishop of Guadalajara, lamented the deaths of “good, normal, family people” who he said were intercepted by a criminal gang for “no apparent reason.” He called on federal, state and municipal authorities to take stronger action to confront the “scourge of insecurity that has existed for a long time on the Zacatecas and Jalisco border.”
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