Mexicans looking for missing relatives

Teuchitlan, Mexico-Sale a group of citizens who were looking for missing relatives in the western state of Jalalco last week on a remote ranch outside the second largest city of Mexico with an anonymous tip, was everything they had to do was to open the unlocked gate.

Inside they worked with simple tools – picks, shovels and metal rods – and did the work that the investigators had supposedly done six months earlier.

What they embarrassed and shook Mexico: dozens of shoes, piles of clothes and the apparently human bone fragments. Brush families from all over the country have already started to reach clothing that they recognize.

It was a shocking memory that Mexicos had disappeared more than 120,000 and the federal government urged to take over the troubled investigation.

A “training base” for cartel recruits

The ranch in Teuchitlan, about 60 kilometers west of Guadalajara, was allegedly used as a training basis for antitrust recruits when National Guard Troops found last September.

The authorities then said that 10 people were arrested, two hostages were freed and a body found in plastic. The public prosecutor had an excavator, dogs and devices to find inconsistencies in the ground.

But then the examination became calm until members of the Jalisco search for Warriors, one of dozens of search collectives, the Dot Mexico, visited a tip last week.

They found their shoes as well as the piles of other clothes and the apparently burned bone fragments.

Members of the search collective were on site again on Thursday to observe the authorities when they worked to register evidence and search the property.

“Many families have brought forward to identify clothing,” said Maribel, a member of the Search collective who spoke to the press outside the ranch and therefore asked to identify only after security through their first names.

“We want all of this, that disappear,” she said. “We hope that this time you do the work as you should.”

An “irresponsible omission”

According to the government, more than 120,000 disappeared people in Mexico are in Mexico in Mexico. Search collectives such as the Jalisco Search Warriors had to organize to do the work that the authorities often do not do. They are looking for websites such as that in Teuchitlan, sometimes with state protection, but more often without and put their discoveries under pressure to do their work.

This time it worked.

The public prosecutor of the Jalisco public prosecutor, Salvador González de Los Santos, visited the ranch personally on Tuesday. He said that the investigators had found six groups of bones, but it was unclear how many victims could belong. He did not indicate any details of why the investigators had previously found out what the untrained private individuals did, but the previous efforts were “not sufficient”.

His office has published photos of all evidence in which they hope that relatives could identify a piece of clothing.

Jalalco Governor Pablo Lemus announced on Wednesday that the office of the federal prosecutor would take over the investigation by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. The Jalalco New Generation Cartel is the dominant criminal organization of the state.

On Thursday, the white government vehicles led the remote ranch of squat buildings, which were surrounded by a high wall and fields.

“This ranch served as a training page and although it sounds terrible, very hard for the annihilation,” said the collective leader Indira Navarro early this week.

She accused the former governor of Enrique Alfaro of the state to “try to hide this kind of situation or discovery”. And she asked loudly how state investigators with technology and training could not have found out what their group did “with pick, shovel and metal bar”.

On Wednesday, the Mexican Bishops' Conference announced in a statement that it was worried by the discovery of the location, which indicates an “irresponsible omission” of the authorities at all three government levels and another sign of the major problem of disappearing the Mexico.