MEXICAN MAN ADMITS USING ACID ON BODIES, ARMY SAYS

MEXICO CITY -- Pozole is a popular Mexican stew that can feature
pork, hominy and an array of vegetables and seasonings. But the name
of the delicacy has taken on a sinister new meaning: Mexican
authorities have detained a man linked to hundreds of deaths in the
drug war who is being called the Pozole Maker.

The man, Santiago Meza Lopez, known as "el Pozolero" in the Mexican
news media, has confessed to dissolving the remains of 300 people in
acid while working for a top drug trafficker, the Mexican Army said
Friday. Dissolving bodies is gaining increasing popularity in the
internecine killings between rival traffickers that is playing out
here, and the practice has become known as making pozole (pronounced
poh-ZOH-leh).

Mr. Meza, 45, confessed to receiving $600 a week to dispose of bodies
for Teodoro Garcia Simental, a drug kingpin who broke with the
Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel and is said to be at war with
Fernando Sanchez Arellano, his former boss, the authorities said.

Soldiers and police officers paraded Mr. Meza before reporters on
Friday in a remote area on the outskirts of Tijuana, where he was
accused of dumping bodies into pits over the last decade, pouring
acid on them and letting them dissolve underground.

Mr. Meza admitted as much as the authorities surrounded him and
ordered him to speak up to the press. "I ask for forgiveness from the
families of these people," he said, according to the newspaper Reforma.

In September, the 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 Mr. Sanchez Arellano's nickname.

The authorities suspect that Mr. Garcia is behind those killings and
others in which mutilated bodies have turned up on Tijuana's streets.
The military nearly arrested Mr. Garcia on Thursday, officials said.