A group of volunteers who sought their relatives disappeared for the first week they received advice on a mass grave hidden in Western Mexico.
When they arrived at the abandoned ranch in front of La Estanzuela, a little rural village in front of Guadalajare, the Mexican authorities announced, discovered three underground cream ovens, burned human remains, hundreds of bones and rejected personal objects, along with Santa Muerte’s figurines – Holy Death.
The authorities said the authorities later found 96 shells from shells of various caliber and metal rings on the ranch. Until last Friday, the discovery was dominated by local newspapers and TV reports, and the search group is called the site as a “extermination camp”.
It is unclear how many people have died in place and none of the remains have been identified. The authorities have not yet said who operated the camp, what crimes were committed and for how long. But this week, the State Attorney’s Office took over the investigation at the request of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Photos taken by authorities and volunteer group, search of Jalisca warriors, showed more than 200 shoes collected together and crowds of other personal items: Blue Summer Dress, Small Pink Backpack, Notebooks, Better Laundry pieces. More than 700 personal items were a cold hint of the number of people who may have died there.
In a country that seemingly ensured by episodes of brutal violence from drug cartel, where secret graves appear every month, the pictures shocked Mexicans and encouraged the outraged human rights groups to demand that the government stop the violence that has been devastated by the nation for years.
“We immediately linked them to Nazi concentration camps,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a seat analyst based in Mexico City. “The number of casualties that could probably have been buried, is huge and recalled the nightmare reminder that Mexico was tortured by mass graves,” Mr. Guerrero added.
More than 120,000 people are forcibly disappeared into Mexico Ever since the record of records began in 1962, according to official data. Human Rights and Volunteer Collectives in search of their missing relatives warned In order for the number to be higher.
The discovery on the ranch comes at a time when Mrs. Sheinbaum faces the strong pressure of President Trump to break organized crime to avoid exports to the United States, and even a possible US military intervention to hunt cartel members.
Partially due to Mr. Trump’s threat, Mrs. Sheinbaum transferred security questions back to the center of her agenda and assumed a more aggressive approach to the fight against crime than her predecessor, experts and analysts say. But her government is facing significant challenges while dealing with powerful criminal groups that control the large areas of the Earth.
One of the most insignificant criminal organizations in Mexico, Cartel New Generation Jalisco, which appeared in the early 2010s, is now the main manufacturer and traders of synthetic drugs, especially fentanil and methamphetamine. The group, which operates in the state of Jalisco and across the country, has diversified in other criminal activities such as illegal felling, trafficking in humans and extortion.
Authorities said the ranch could have managed Kartel Jalisco. The dominance of the group and its rapid expansion in recent years coincide with an increasing number of murders, forced disappearances and discoveries of mass graves in Jalisco.
Indira Navarro, a leader of the Jalisco warriors who found a place, she said in interviews with local newspaper media This week that several individuals contacted the group to say that they were recruited and trained at a point in the use of various weapons and torture techniques. But the ranch, they said, was also used as a murder site where criminals routinely defamed their victims.
Ms. Navarro, who could not address the comment, told the news that, according to testimonies, young people from other countries were recruited through false offers for jobs posted on social networks. Once they accepted the job, she said, they were invited to the bus station in Guadalajara, the capital of the state, and from there they were taken to the ranch.
Mrs. Navarro told her that a young man told her that young recruits were sometimes forced to burn their victims as part of their training. If they objected to the orders of their coaches, the recruits sometimes fed wildlife, like lions, she said.
“This is not a horror movie; it’s our reality and people should know about it,” said Mrs. Navarro, whose brother disappeared nine years ago, she said in an interview with a national radio show.
The New York Times could not independently check the accounts.
Local authorities first found the ranch last September and found weapons there, shell bushings and bone fragments, according to official reports, but further investigations were stopped for vague reasons. During the same inspection, officials found and saved two people who were abducted and held on the ranch, and also discovered the body wrapped in plastic.
The Attorney General, Salvador González, has since told a local newspaper that it was not possible to search the entire ranch in September “because there are many hectares in the area.”
Mrs. Sheinbaum suggested during a press conference this week that local authorities could miss in their initial investigation.
The Chief Lawyer “is accurate in a statement that it is not credible that such a situation would not be known to the authorities of that municipality and the state,” she said. “But the first thing we have to do is explore.”
