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MEXICO CITY -- Prosecutors successful occidental Mexico confirmed this week the find of hundreds of covering items and bony fragments by a radical of radical searching for relatives astatine a antecedently known cartel grooming site, exposing large shortcomings successful the archetypal investigation.
But the find successful the authorities of Jalisco was hardly the archetypal specified gruesome discovery. Mexico's authoritative registry counts much than 120,000 disappeared people. The find of specified places has accelerated successful the past 15 years arsenic much relatives of the missing bash the enactment the authorities often won't to hunt for their missing loved ones.
In this case, it was the Jalisco Search Warriors radical checking retired a ranch successful Teuchitlan, astir 37 miles (60 kilometers) from Guadalajara that was recovered by National Guard troops past September.
At that time, authorities said 10 radical were arrested, 2 hostages were freed and a assemblage was found. They described it arsenic a cartel grooming site. The authorities prosecutor's bureau went successful with a backhoe, dogs and devices to find inconsistencies successful the ground, but past the probe inexplicably stalled.
The hunt radical had gone determination aft receiving an anonymous call, said person Indira Navarro.
"This ranch served arsenic a grooming tract and adjacent though it sounds awful, truly harsh, for extermination," Navarro said.
The tract is lone the latest successful a troubling past of specified places successful Mexico. Drug cartels person utilized these often distant locations to marque their victims disappear.
When The Associated Press visited a tract adjacent Nuevo Laredo, crossed the borderline from Texas, successful 2022, a country successful a tiny abandoned location had been converted into a crematorium. When investigators had archetypal arrived the level was covered with 20 inches (50 centimeters) of bony fragments and ash and much bones were scattered crossed the ranch.
Police basal defender extracurricular the entranceway to Izaguirre Ranch wherever skeletal remains were discovered successful Teuchitlan, Jalisco state, Mexico, Thursday, March 13, 2025.
AP Photo/Alejandra Leyva)
Here's a look astatine respective different cases that person unnerved Mexicans:
'The Stewmaker' (Baja California)
In 2009, Santiago Meza confessed to authorities that helium had made 150 to 300 bodies vanish for his cause lord brag by dissolving them successful lye.
Meza utilized large lipid drums and past buried the remaining bones oregon dumped them successful streams. He was dubbed the "Pozolero," oregon the 1 who makes pozole, a Mexican stew. He said helium wasn't the lone 1 who did it.
San Fernando (Tamaulipas)
Mexico hadn't been accustomed to uncovering ample clandestine graves. That changed successful 2011, erstwhile astir 200 bodies were recovered successful graves connected the outskirts of San Fernando, southbound of Brownsville, Texas. It was the aforesaid municipality wherever a twelvemonth earlier 72 migrants had been killed connected a ranch.
Authorities struggled to place and process each of the victims.
Officials said astir of the bodies recovered successful and astir San Fernando belonged to Central American migrants kidnapped disconnected buses and killed by the Zetas. Some were offered the accidental to unrecorded and articulation the pack - if they proved their worthy by warring different guiltless passengers with sledgehammers.
Piedras Negras jailhouse (Coahuila)
In 2017, the Colegio de México shared its probe that determined the Piedras Negras jail, crossed the borderline from Eagle Pass, Texas was a basal for the Zetas cartel.
The investigators said that arsenic galore arsenic 20 radical had the occupation of dispatching the cartel's victims successful barrels of diesel fuel.
Victims were sometimes changeable connected tract oregon bludgeoned to decease and dismembered.
La Bartolina (Tamaulipas)
Local media astir Matamoros began to speech astir this tract successful Mexico's acold northeast corner, wherever the Rio Grande dumps into the Gulf Mexico, successful 2016. But it was years earlier authorities did anything.
When Tamaulipas Search Commissioner Jorge Macías visited for the archetypal clip helium saw "pelvic bones, craniums, femurs, everything thrown determination ... I said to myself 'it can't be,'" helium told the AP successful 2021.
By 2022, authorities had recovered immoderate 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of bones astatine La Bartolina. They had identified astatine slightest 15 "extermination sites" successful the authorities with La Bartolina being the largest. Federal investigators are inactive moving there.
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