A military patrol in southern Tamaulipas made a macabre discovery on Christmas morning; an abandoned cargo truck containing 13 bodies. State authorities said the truck bore license plates from the neighboring state of Veracruz and contained two written messages alluding to a settling of scores between rival criminal groups.

Just last Thursday in northern Veracruz, 16 people died in a series of attacks on passenger buses. The following day, ten bodies were dumped in the town of Tampico Alto – not far from the state line with Tamaulipas.

In a separate incident in the state of Jalisco, at least five people died and dozens more became ill after eating a poisoned Christmas dinner at a drug rehabilitation center. Multiple massacres have taken place in rehab centers over the past few years, but this is apparently the first time killers have used poison instead of bullets.

Multi-homicides in the drug rehabilitation centers are usually attributed to criminal gangs, but rarely investigated.

At least 29 people were murdered Sunday in what the Milenio newspaper described as the most violent Christmas of the current presidential term.

[Transcript of headline produced for FSRN: http://fsrn.org/audio/headlines-monday-december-26-2011/9611 ]

Armed men attacked three buses in northern Veracruz Thursday, killing at least eleven passengers. According to the state government, five assailants were killed when the military arrived at the scene of an attack. Some early reports cited a regional mayor estimating a death toll as high as forty victims.

The US Consulate in Matamoros has issued a warning to US citizens to use caution when travelling in Veracruz and recommends only traveling during the day. The same bulletin reiterated long-standing advice that U.S. citizens “defer non-essential travel to the state of Tamaulipas”.

Highways in the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and San Luis Potosi have become notoriously dangerous, with criminals taking advantage of the cover of night to hold up passenger buses and private vehicles.

The main highways in northern Veracruz are connected to the port city of Tampico, just across the state line in Tamaulipas. The most dangerous roads in Tamaulipas lead to the border bridges with South Texas.

The bodies of ten murder victims were dumped in the Veracruz town of Tampico Alto this morning. Like the multi-homicide targeting the buses, the specific motive for the violence is unclear, but the perpetrators are assumed to be associated with organized crime operating in the region.

As has been the case with Tamaulipas, much of the violence in Veracruz is occurring under a mantle of fear-induced silence. The press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders this week named Veracruz one of the ten deadliest regions in the world for journalists.

Also this week, 900 police officers in the port city of Veracruz and its nearby suburb of Boca del Rio were dismissed and replaced by soldiers in what authorities describe as an anti-corruption measure.

Ongoing excavations in north-central Mexico have unearthed the largest mass graves yet in the country’s drug war. As of Tuesday night, 188 bodies had been recovered from mass graves in the state of Durango – surpassing the number of dead exhumed last month in the state of Tamaulipas.

Whether the dead were civilians, kidnapping victims, or members of rival criminal groups is unclear. Mexico has witnessed a spike in cases of missing persons in the past 3 years.

The digging continues in Durango…unlike in San Fernando, Tamaulipas – where state authorities suddenly stopped giving updates on mass graves there, without explanation. State and local authorities in Tamaulipas are widely believed to have strong ties to organized crime and the self-censored press there often remains silent on the issue. At least 183 bodies were recovered from dozens of shallow graves in San Fernando throughout the month of April. It’s the same town where 72 migrants were massacred last August.

While the Durango discovery has become the largest mass graves case in Mexico’s ongoing wave of drug-related violence, it’s unlikely to be the last.

The picturesque town of Ciudad Mier used to be a choice day trip destination along the Texas/Mexico border. Today it’s a ghost town. The state governor of Tamaulipas says at least 100 families have fled the town after members of the Zetas cartel warned the population to leave or face death. Ciudad Mier has a population of just over 6,000 residents.

Many from Ciudad Mier have fled to nearby Ciudad Miguel Alemán, where city officials have set up what is apparently Mexico’s first temporary shelter for civilians fleeing Drug War violence. The building, which in the past has acted as a hurricane shelter, is reportedly now housing around 300 people. Authorities on the Texas side of the border have not made public any plans or intentions to provide emergency shelter to the displaced.

The exodus comes on the heels of a major shootout in Matamoros last Friday which killed the acting boss of the Gulf Cartel. The Zetas were formerly the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, but have spent much of this year at war with their former employers. Some security analysts warn the kingpin’s death will spark a harder and stronger push by the Zetas to consolidate control over territory in northeastern Mexico.

The official who opened the investigation into the massacre of 72 Central and South Americans in northern Mexico has been found dead. Mexican marines found the investigator’s body dumped along a highway in the northern border state of Tamaulipas. A second body encountered at the scene is thought to be that of a municipal police official linked to the same case. The state’s attorney general reported the two as missing late Thursday.

The investigator’s disappearance and death illustrates why many high-level crimes in Mexico go unpunished. Cartel-related violence in Tamaulipas also frequently goes unreported for fear of retaliation. Early this morning, a car bomb exploded outside of the Ciudad Victoria office of the national broadcaster, Televisa, which has been covering the massacre.

Testimony by the massacre’s sole survivor indicates the murdered migrants had been kidnapped en route to the US by organized criminals. An average of more than 1600 migrants are kidnapped in Mexico each month according to data published by the country’s National Human Rights Commission.