Irma González recognized a gray backpack in the photo. It was the same one who used her son for high school and the one who took with him for his first job three years ago, just before he disappeared.
When a lady González, 43, saw pictures on the television of bone fragments and scattered personal belongings discovered on the ranch in Western Mexico, her heart sank. Did her son Jossel Sánchez meet his fate there? Are his remains somewhere there? Or did the criminal group bring him to that place just to take him somewhere else?
Standing about 300 meters away from the entrance to the IsaGuirre ranch on Wednesday, surrounded by sugar cane fields and infertile hills, she was desperate for the answers.
“I just want to find my son, dead or alive,” she said as she cried, and prayed with local police officers who cordonated from a place to let her inside.
Mrs. González echoed the sadness felt by the myriad of other Mexicans who sought missing loved ones, which was broken by a mix of hope and despair. This emotional restlessness followed Discovering volunteers to search two weeks ago Ranch in front of La Estanzuela, a small, dusty Mexican village near Guadalajara in Jalisco.
Inside the abandoned place, members of the search group, called Jalisco Warriors, found traces of unimaginable violence: cream ovens, burned human remains and bone pieces. Discarded personal objects and hundreds of shoes.
The discovery sent shock waves through the nation, becoming the latest symbol of the ruthless violence of Mexico and his crisis of disappearance.
More than 120,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since the country began to follow in 1962, according to official data. From 2018 to January 2023, a government agency coordinating efforts to find missing persons in Mexico recorded 2,710 secret graves containing human remains across the country.
So far, local authorities do not have many answers about the so -called “extermination camp” here in Jalisco, as the media and the search group called me. Officials said the camp may have been managed by Cartel New Generation Jalisco New Generation – one of the most translucent criminal organizations in the country – for recruiting recruits, torturing their victims and body disposal. But they still didn’t say how many people died in place, and none of the remains were identified.
On Wednesday, State Attorney Alejandro Gertz of Mexico criticized the initial investigation conducted by local authorities and said that it was full of irregularities. Local officials failed to secure a place after being located six months ago by members of the National Guard, and shortly thereafter “abandoned,” said Mr. Gertz.
These investigators did not properly documented or registered the evidence they found in place, nor did they take fingerprints in place, he said. The Office of the State Attorney of the country has since assumed the investigation at the request of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
New York Times journalists entered the football playground camp closed on Thursday on Thursday.
All the evidence discovered by the search group disappeared – the authorities and dozens of investigators, a law clerk and forensic experts have collected. Small yellow flags emphasized the desolate terrain, and each marked the place where investigators discovered a fraction of the evidence.
Inside a large warehouse with a tin roof, where a search group discovered a bunch of clothing and shoes, the space was now creepy empty. Three chickens wandered silence. On the floor, one candle blinked.
Garbage, empty beer cans and pieces of broken glass were bothered by the soil. Partially buried cars and spines tires marked the area where authorities believe that the cartel may have trained their recruits.
Small holes, no larger than a garbage can, interrupted the soil like salt, left by forensic anthropologists who dug the soil in search of human remains or other evidence.
Several major digging places are cordonated with a yellow police ribbon.
The day before, Mrs. González was eventually allowed, only revealed that all the evidence had been moved. She went there with a mixture of relief and disappointment. “As a mother, I got sick, but I want to finish this suffering,” she said.
More than three years ago, the son of Mrs. González Jossel disappeared after recruiting a job at a cellphone store in Puebla via Facebook ad in central Mexico. At the age of 18 and close to graduation, he gave up supporting his family when Mrs. González became ill with pneumonia that she couldn’t work.
Shortly after the news of the extermination camp appeared two weeks ago, the authorities posted a catalog with photos of more than 1500 items found inside the ranch. Mrs. González said she recognized Jossel’s backpack.
She raised enough money to buy a plane ticket to Jalisco to make sure if the backpack really belonged to her son. Maybe in that little confirmation she could find some clarity, and maybe even some peace.
Numerous families from all over Mexico have examined photographs, desperately looking for signs of their missing relatives. Some recognized the objects and rushed to Guadalajar, the capital of Jalisco, hoping to find answers.
While the discovery of the ranch shocked the nation, the news of the appearance of new mass graves and buried victims became a common occurrence in Jalisco, which has the highest number of disappearance in Mexico.
Just two days before the IsaGuirre ranch was found, the members of the Jalisco Group search warriors received a mass grave advice on a residential estate at Guadalajara. There they discovered 13 bags containing human remains buried in the yard, according to Raul Servín, one of the leaders of the search group.
The inhabitants were not aware of the existence of the grave, he said.
Seven years ago, Mr. Servín was forced to become an anthropologist when his 20-year-old son Raúl disappeared without a trace. It was a woman from another search organization that taught him the skills he would need: how to choose the right shovel for digging and recognizing the specific hollow sound that the Earth releases when it stepped – a sign that something or someone could bury themselves below.
He now shares his days working as a waiter and responds to hundreds of calls to the tips of possible places of mass graves throughout Guadalajare. He goes, a shovel in his hand, examines the terrain and digs, seeking victims of the missing. In seven years, he said, he found hundreds of bodies.
He does this to try to give families some peace.
“A pair of shoes does not give you a burial body and visit the cemetery or any clarity of what happened to my boy,” said Mr. Servín, 53.
His son is among more than 15,000 people who disappeared in Jalisco. Many of these cases are believed to be related to the New Generation Jalisco Cartel.
As the criminal group has expanded its territory throughout the country in recent years, the number of killings and disappearances in Jalisco has been rugged.
Ulises Ruiz, a local photographer who was with a search group when they discovered the place of Ranca earlier this month, compared the wide disappearance to the pandemia, noting that the phenomenon increased exponentially, influencing more and more people.
“It’s like this happened to a man, we thought it was happening elsewhere, in other countries or cities,” he said. “But all of a sudden, everyone around you has a loved one or know someone who has disappeared.”
James Wagner contribute to reporting.
