This story contains graphic images and descriptions

(CNN) By the time he was found, the boy was barely alive. The ten-year-old's neck had been cut, leaving a nearly 3-inch (7cm) wound. Disturbing photos taken by the authorities who found him and obtained by CNN show the boy in jeans, a US football sweatshirt and a light jacket, lying in the curve of his dead father's arm.

They had been brutally attacked while traveling across Veracruz state in Mexico, in a tragedy that underscores the desperation driving so many Central Americans to make the dangerous trek north to the United States by land, often putting their lives in the hands of smugglers.

The travelers were Guatemalan , according to President of the Morelos State Human Rights Commission Raúl Hernández. The boy, Cristian, and his father Rudy, 37, left from Guatemala on May 28 this year. Cristian's uncle and teenage cousin were also on the trip. In total, it was a small group: Two brothers traveling together, each bringing a son.

They had hired a smuggler in Guatemala that would take them all the way to the United States, but the smuggler abandoned them in Mexico, Hernández said, where they were kidnapped.

Cristian is receiving psychological and medical care in Mexico.

Their kidnappers were members of Los Zetas drug cartel, according to Morelos State Secretary of Interior Pablo Ojeda Cardenas. They allegedly called their victims' relatives in the United States, demanding a ransom of $12,000, he said. The family was able to send $8,000, but didn't hear back from the kidnappers.

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