Ovens and bone fragments – BBC visits Mexican cartel ‘extermination’ site | Global News Avenue

The gates of the Izaguirre ranch look a lot like any other person you might have found in Jalisco. The two horses in front may nod to the surrounding cattle and sugar cane fields.

However, behind the Black Iron Gate is allegedly evidence of some of Mexico’s most serious drug cartel violence.

After tipping the possible locations of large-scale graves, activist groups of relatives of some missing people in Mexico went to the ranch in hopes of finding signs of their missing relatives.

What they found was much worse: 200 pairs of shoes, hundreds of clothes, dozens of suitcases and backpacks, discarded after the owner itself was obviously disposed of.

More chilling ovens and human bone fragments were found on the ranch.

Activists claim that a new generation of Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) used the site to force recruit and train their football soldiers and torture victims and deteriorate their bodies.

“There are children’s toys there,” said Luz Toscano, a member of the Buscadores Guerreros de Jalisco Collective.

“People were desperate,” she recalled.

“They will see the shoes and say, ‘Those that look like my missing relatives wear when they disappear.”

Toscano believes that authorities must now review all personal effects step by step and make them provide a careful inspection to their families.

However, for many, the worst part of the creepy discovery was the attack on a ranch near the village of Tchitilan last September.

At that time they arrested 10 arrests and released two hostages, but either they did not find or disclose any evidence that the violence that took place there was obvious.

While the whole situation remains to be resolved, after the action last year, the municipality took what (if any) has been taken, but critics and families of victims have publicly accused them of accomplice with the Cartels of Jalisco.

Gov. Pablo Lemus responded in a video message.

He said his administration is working fully with federal authorities and insisted that “the Harigo people have no one to wash their hands.”

For Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the incident in Jalisco threatened a strong start to her presidency.

She ordered federal investigators to be responsible for the case, given serious suspicion of the actions of local police and the state attorney general’s office.

She urges people not to draw conclusions when conducting investigations.

“It is important to investigate before we draw any conclusions,” she said in a morning briefing earlier this week.

“What did they find on the website? Before anything else, we have to hear from the Attorney General’s office that the agency is responsible and they will let the whole country know what they found.”

However, whether most Mexicans will believe the official version of the incident is another question.

Now, the place crawls with police, federal investigators and forensics teams.

Whatever their conclusions, however, Mexican media called the Izagir Ranch a “extinction” site.

Meanwhile, ahead of the protest march this weekend, a growing group of search teams of victims’ relatives came to the state capital Guadalajara, urging authorities to do more to find missing people in Mexico.

Rosario Magaña is one of them. She is the mother of Carlos Amador Magaña, who disappeared in June 2017. He is only 19 years old.

“I still feel hopeless because it’s been eight years and I’m still in the same situation,” she said – she’s searching endlessly for her son to kidnap with his best friend.

“It’s a very, very slow process in terms of the state attorney general’s office and inquiry.”

“I still have the confidence and hope to find him,” she stressed. “But my situation is not moving forward, which is frustrating.”

Rosario, who left the church for unknown victims at the ranch in Teuchitlán, said the case’s allegations of error, supervision, collusion and negligence only emphasized the uphill struggle like her, like her, in getting answers to the most basic questions about the children about their children for years.

“There are so many mass graves in Jalisco and so many cartel safe houses, and the authorities know CJNG’s method of committing crimes. So, what is the government doing?” she asked in a word.