A group of citizens looking for missing relatives in western Jalisco, Mexico’s second largest city, arrived last week at a ranch on an anonymous tip. All they had to do was open the gate.
They used simple tools, such as picks, metal bars and shovels to do the same work as state investigators who had supposedly done it six months ago.
They found dozens of shoes and heaps of clothes, as well as what looked like human bone fragments. This embarrassed the state authorities in Mexico and shocked them. Families from all over the country are already reaching out to identify clothing they claim they know.
The incident was enough to convince the federal government that it should take charge of the investigation.
A “training base for cartel recruits”
When National Guard troops discovered the ranch in Teuchitlan last September, it was allegedly used as a cartel training base.
The authorities then reported that 10 people had been arrested, 2 hostages had been freed and the body of a dead man was wrapped in plastic. The state prosecutor’s office used a backhoe and dogs to search for inconsistencies.
The investigation was quiet for a while, until last week, when members of Jalisco Search Warriors visited the site on the basis of an anonymous tip. This is one of many search groups that are scattered throughout Mexico.
The shoes were found, along with other clothing and what looked like burned bone fragments.
The search collective invited members to the site to watch authorities register evidence and search property.
“A lot families have come forward to identify clothing items,” said Maribel. She spoke to the media outside the ranch, and asked only to be identified as Maribel for her safety.
She said, “What we want to do is stop this disappearances.” “We hope they will do their work properly this time.”
A “responsible” omission
According to government figures, there are over 120,000 people who have disappeared in Mexico. The Jalisco Search Warrior collective has had to form to carry out the work the authorities will not. Sometimes with government protection but most often without, they search for sites such as the one in Teuchitlan and then let authorities know about their findings to get them to do their job.
This time, it worked.
Jalisco State Prosecutor Salvador Gonzalez de los Santos visited the ranch personally Tuesday. He stated that investigators found six groups, but he did not know how many victims the bones could be from. He didn’t give any details as to why investigators previously failed in their efforts, but stated that the previous efforts were “insufficient.”
The office of the prosecutor posted photos of all evidence found in hopes that family members might be able to identify a piece of clothing.
Jalisco Gov. Pablo Lemus announced on Wednesday that the federal Attorney General’s Office will take over the investigation, as requested by Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum. The Jalisco cartel, also known as the New Generation Jalisco cartel, is the most powerful criminal organization in this state.
White government vehicles circled the ranch on Thursday. It was surrounded by tall walls and fields, with squat houses.
Indira Navarra, the leader of this collective, said earlier in the week, “This ranch was used as a training ground and, even though it sounded awful, extermination is what we were doing.”
She criticized the previous governor of the state. Enrique Alfaro “tried to hide” this type of situation or discovery. She asked out loud how state investigators, who have the technology and training to do so, could not have found what her group had done “with a pick and shovel and a metal bar.”
The Mexican Episcopal Conference released a statement on Wednesday, saying that the discovery of this site was troubling. It points to “irresponsible” omissions by authorities at the three levels of government, and is another sign of Mexico’s larger disappearance problem.
In recent months, multiple mass graves were discovered in Mexico. In January, at the very least a total of 56 bodies were found in an unmarked mass grave in northern Mexico near the border with the United States.
Authorities said that a mass grave found in December last year in a suburb near Guadalajara, with dozens bags of dismembered bodies parts, contained the remains 24 people. Authorities in Mexico discovered 12 bodies in clandestine graves located in the northern state of Chihuahua. Twelve more bodies were found in graves located about two hours away from Ciudad Juarez which is across the border of El Paso Texas.
The Mexican authorities reported that they had recovered 31 bodies in pits located in Chiapas. This state is plagued with cartel violence.
Searching for missing persons collectives say that drug trafficking cartels, organized crime gangs and others sometimes use ovens in order to incinerate and destroy their victims.
