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The discovery of human remains, hundreds of shoes and clothes and an apparent clandestine crematorium on what activists called a drug cartel “extermination camp” has become a major scandal for the Mexican government.
More than 1,000 items of clothing, including hundreds of pairs of shoes, were found by activists around a ranch in the Mexican state of Jalisco, which also had several underground ovens apparently used to dispose of bodies.
The horrors of the site have highlighted the country’s chronic problem of disappearances linked to drug cartels. Across Mexico, well over 100,000 people are registered missing. That figure almost certainly understates the problem, given widespread fear of reporting disappearances to the authorities.
A makeshift obstacle course on the ranch has fueled speculation it served as a recruitment and training camp for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organized crime groups, which has been known to trick and kidnap young people in search of work.
“Your skin crawls seeing everything thrown on the ground, seeing the suitcases, the dreams of these young people,” Índira Navarro, one of the activists that discovered the site, told Radio Fórmula. “To see how they ended up there because they thought they could have a better life and better salary.”
Aerial view of the Izaguirre Ranch, which may have served as a training centre © Ulises Ruiz/AFP/Getty Images
Federal attorney-general Alejandro Gertz Manero on Wednesday confirmed that human remains had been found, but refused to say whether the site had been a training or extermination camp.
Mexican authorities are at odds over the grim discovery, with the federal administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum accusing the opposition-controlled state government of mishandling the investigation.
The ranch was first secured by state authorities in September 2024 in an operation that led to the arrest of 10 armed people, the release of two kidnapped individuals and the discovery of a body.
But the ovens and large amounts of clothing were only reported last week when Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, a collective of relatives of missing people, went to the ranch after receiving an anonymous tip-off. It took them a few hours with basic tools to find what they suspected to be human remains underground.
The state authorities have since said they were unable to fully explore the extensive ranch when it was first secured, and promised to cooperate with federal authorities, who are now leading the investigation.
Gertz said they were investigating whether failures in the initial investigation were down to incompetence or collusion with organized crime.
Shoes are displayed in a room of a ranch © Jalisco Attorney General Office/Reuters
In response to the scandal, Sheinbaum this week announced measures to bolster laws around missing people and dedicate more resources to searches. But she also claimed on Thursday that the case was being used to attack her and her government.
The leftwing leader promised the incident would be investigated thoroughly, unlike similar scandals under previous governments, such as the abduction of 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa in 2014. They were never found.
“There will not be impunity,” Sheinbaum said on Monday. “We will never hide anything.”
Sheinbaum has made reducing Mexico’s rampant violence a priority of her government after security declined under her predecessor and ally, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Official data has shown a decline in homicides in recent months, but at the same time, the rate of disappearances has kept rising. Jalisco alone has almost 15,000 missing people, the highest number of any Mexican state.
It is also the stronghold of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which was last month declared a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration, along with seven other Latin American crime groups.