Kidnapping Immigrants

The vulnerability to kidnapping and exploitation of South and Central American immigrants passing through Mexico has earned some American press recently. Excélsior followed that up today with the chilling story of a Chilean man kidnapped by alleged Zetas and now stranded in Mexico:

Carlos remembers that the next day the kidnappers said he was with one of the maras. They thought so after seeing his tattoos. Soon enough, they tied him completely naked to a pole that was hanging from the ceiling and the torture began, "they began to beat me with a piece of lumber, around the backside, two or three shots, but with one shot with the lumber and you've already had enough. They asked me, Where are you from? And I told them, "No, I'm Chilean, I'm not a mara like you say," he remembers.

He also said that at one point the kidnappers were speaking to one another in an Indian dialect, which is noteworthy, because I don't remember the Zetas ever being linked to indigenous groups. Nor, for that matter, do I remember reading about indigenous groups being linked to kidnapping. Carlos survived but, lacking the money for a plane ticket, is still stuck in Mexico.