Families await 42 bodies, answers after Mexico gunfight

Families of 42 criminal suspects killed in a gunfight with federal forces in western Mexico picked up bodies at a morgue and angrily denounced the “massacre." Around 70 relatives flocked to the medical forensic services building in Morelia, capital of Michoacan state, with some questioning government accounts of a fierce battle between an armed group and federal forces. Authorities say one federal police officer was killed in a three-hour gun battle that erupted when security forces learned that armed men had taken over the vast property in the municipality of Tanhuato.

This was not a clash, it was a massacre.

Victor Hugo Reynoso, whose brother Luis Alberto was among the 42 dead

Federal officials have indicated the confrontation was between federal forces and the Jalisco New Generation cartel. It has grown rapidly in recent years into one of Mexico’s biggest organized crime groups. Most of the families at the morgue came from Ocotlan, in Jalisco, and said many of the men who were killed were farmers who had gone to Michoacan to find work. But others acknowledged that they did not know what kind of work the men were doing.

The truth is I don’t know what he was doing there. I didn’t now that he had gone there or what work he was doing.

Erika Eunice Hurtado, who saw images of her dead brother on television

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