Discovering bones and shoes in suspected cartel “extinction center” sparked protests in Mexico
Protesters gathered across Mexico on Saturday to demand justice. Charred bones, shoes and clothes On the suspected drug cartel training ground.
Demonstrations were held in the western state of Jalisco where the remains were found in cities across the country, including Mexico City, Tijuana, Tiara Cruise and St. Louis Potosi, according to AFP reporters and local news reports.
A family in search of Mexico’s more than 100,000 lost people was found on a ranch on March 5, where the bodies were believed to be held.
The Guerreros Buscadores collective (dedicated to finding missing persons) described the site as a “center of extinction” with a “secret crematorium” that shocked a country that had been trapped in cartel-related violence.
Sierra Montes/Reuters
In the Mexican capital, protesters placed candles and a row of shoes to pay tribute to the disappearance.
“I came to speak for my son and disappeared,” said Aurora Corona, 58.
She hopes the discovery will force authorities to do more to find the 124,059 people lost in Mexico, mainly since the government declared the drug cartel war in 2006.
She said in tears: “Hope they will pay attention to us now, and they see the horror of the country we live in.”
Since October 2023, groups looking for Mexicans have reported six other allegedly secret crematoriums have been found in Jalisco.
Hundreds of graves have been found elsewhere in the country.
The UN Human Rights Office on Friday called its findings in Jalisco a “deeply disturbing reminder of the disappearance trauma associated with organized crime across the country.”
It added: “This discovery is even more disturbing, as the site was previously attacked by the National Guard and the Jalisco State Attorney’s Office in September 2024, but no important evidence was detected.”
Juan Carlos Perez, a 22-year-old student, hopes the protests will be a wake-up call to take action against the security and judiciary that rule Mexico for two decades.
He said: “(discovered about this) my first reaction was ‘ah, another’
Jalisco Attorney General’s Office through the Associated Press
Jalisco State Attorney El Salvador Gonzalez de Los Santos visited the ranch in person last week. He said investigators found six groups of bones, but it is not clear how many victims they could belong to. He did not provide details on why investigators have failed to find what untrained private citizens have done before, but said previous efforts were “insufficient.”
His office released photos of all the evidence, hoping that relatives could identify a piece of clothing.
Several mass graves have been found in Mexico in recent months. At least in January 56 corpses were found In the unmarked mass graves of northern Mexico, not far from the U.S. border.
one Popular graves Dozens of bags of dismembered body parts contained the remains of 24 people were found in the suburbs of Guadalajara last December. In the same month, Mexican authorities said they took back the 31 corpse From Chipas, a country plagued by cartel violence.
A collective search for missing persons It says drug trafficking cartels and other organized criminal gangs sometimes use ovens to incinerate their victims without leaving any trace.
