POZOLE is a popular Mexican stew that can feature pork and an array of vegetables and seasonings. However, the name of the delicacy has taken on a sinister new meaning: the Mexican authorities have detained a man linked to hundreds of deaths in a drug war who is being called the "pozole maker".
The man, Santiago Meza López, known as "el Pozolero" in the Mexican media, has confessed to dissolving the remains of 300 people in acid while working for a top drug trafficker, the Mexican army has said.
Dissolving bodies is gaining increasing po
pularity in the internecine killings between rival traffickers as large parts of Mexico are gripped by a drug war, and the practice has become known as "making pozole".
Meza, 45, has confessed to receiving the equivalent of £440 a week to dispose of bodies for Teodoro Garcia Simental, a drug kingpin who broke with the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix cartel and is said to be at war with Fernando Sánchez Arellano, his former boss.
Soldiers and police officers paraded Meza before reporters in a remote cement-block shack on the outskirts of Tijuana, where he was accused of dumping bodies into pits over the past decade, pouring acid on them and letting them dissolve underground.
Meza admitted as much as the authorities surrounded him and ordered him to speak to the media. "I ask for forgiveness from the families of these people," he said, according to the newspaper Reforma.
Meza told police his busiest period was in December 2007 when he disposed of 32 bodies, according to prosecutor Rommel Moreno, who said there was also a spike in disappearances that month in Tijuana.
In September last year, police found three barrels of acid containing human remains outside a seafood restaurant with a note attached that said, "We're going to make pozole" of those who work with the Engineer, a reference to Sánchez Arellano's nickname.
Now the families of 100 missing people want to show photos of their loved ones to Meza.
The relatives have asked the authorities for permission for a face-to-face meeting with him, said Cristina Palacios, the president of Citizens United Against Impunity, a group that represents families of missing people in Tijuana.
"We are here because this arrest has given us a ray of hope," Mr Palacios said, after meeting Baja California state authorities.
The relatives did not say whether they believed their missing loved ones were involved in drug trafficking. But Fernando Ocegueda, whose son disappeared in February 2007, said most of the 100 people had vanished in eastern Tijuana, which is believed to be Garcia's stronghold.
He said the group believes Garcia "had a lot to do with the kidnapping of many of the people we are looking for".
Murders and kidnappings have surged in Mexico in recent years as cartels battle each other for territory and fight the thousands of troops deployed to drug hotspots across the country.
Drug violence claimed more than 5,300 lives last year, double the number in 2007.
The full article contains 520 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
