Mexico City, Oct 17 (EFE) Nine dismembered bodies, cut into 57 pieces, have been found in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero, authorities said.
The bodies were stuffed inside garbage bags in the back of a pick-up truck parked in front of the Cristo Rey clinic in Tlapehuala, a town on Guerrero’s boundary with neighboring Michoacan, authorities said Friday.

Police arrived after an anonymous telephone tip, the Guerrero state Public Safety Department said in a statement.

All the victims were men.

Inside the truck, which was blocking the Altamirano-Iguala road, were messages purporting to be from La Familia Michoacana, a powerful crime organisation based in Michoacan, the statement said.

Seven of the dead were shot in the head execution-style, while the other two had their skulls caved in, apparently with a blunt instrument.

“La Familia does not kill innocents, he who must die, dies, here are your people, collect them and come fight,” read one of the messages in the truck’s cab, while the other said: “So you learn to respect.”

Both messages were signed “F.M.”

Hours after the gruesome discovery in Tlapehuala, Guerrero police found two bodies inside a car trunk in the Pacific resort town of Acapulco. Left with those victims was a sign claiming responsibility on behalf of “El jefe de jefes” (The Boss of Bosses).

The same individual or group took responsibility last week for 10 other killings in Guerrero. All of the men were bound and gagged and each had been killed by a shot to the back of the head.

One group of bodies was accompanied by a sign reading, “this will happen to all the kidnapping and extorting rats,” signed by “El jefe de jefes”.

“El jefe de jefes” is the title of a popular song by Los Tigres del Norte as well as the nickname of crime boss Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who has been behind bars for several years.

Some of the outfits battling each other to dominate Mexico’s lucrative drug trade, notably La Familia Michoacana, attempt to portray themselves as defenders of their communities through vigilantism directed at thieves and rapists.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces in a scramble for control of smuggling and distribution.

The death toll from the multisided conflict has grown steadily, from around 1,500 in 2006 to more 6,000 last year, for a three-year total of nearly 15,000.