Evidence from within the “Genuine Camp” promised despair and hope

Irma González gets to know the gray backpack in the picture. It was the same thing that her son used for the secondary school and the self that he took with him in his first job three years ago, before his disappearance.

When the lady Gonzalez, 43, watched the photos on bone fragments and the spreading personal property that was discovered on a farm in western Mexico, whose heart was drowned. Did her son, Josel Sanchez, met his fate there? Was his remains there somewhere? Or is a criminal group brought to this place only to take it to another place?

It stands about 300 feet from the Izaguirre farm entrance on Wednesday, surrounded by sugar cane fields and arid hills, and was desperate to obtain answers.

“I just want to find my son, dead or alive,” she was crying and begging with local police officers who surrounded the site to allow her inside.

Mrs. Gonzalez repeated the sadness felt by countless Mexicans who are looking for their missing loved ones, which was shattered with a mixture of hope and despair. I followed these emotional disorders Discover by volunteers research two weeks ago From a farm outside La Estanzuela, a mysterious Mexican village near Guadalajara in the state of Galissco.

Inside the abandoned site, the members of the research group, who are called the search for warriors in Gallisco, have found effects of unimaginable violence: bodies burning ovens, burning human residues and bone appearance. Personal things and hundreds of shoes have been ignored.

This discovery has sent shock waves across the nation, and it has become the latest symbol of Mexican violence, which is unavoidable and its disappearance.

It has lost more than 120,000 people in Mexico since the country began to follow in 1962, according to official data. From 2018 to January 2023, the government agency that coordinates efforts to locate the missing persons in Mexico recorded 2,710 secret hat containing human remains throughout the country.

To date, local authorities do not have many answers about the so -called “Gennuting Camp” here in Gallisco, where the media and the research group came. Officials said the camp may have been operated by Gillesco Jill New Gil Cartel – one of the most violent criminal organizations in the country – to train recruits, torture their victims and get rid of bodies. But they have not yet said the number of people who died on the site, and none of the remains were determined.

On Wednesday, Prosecutor Alejandro Gertz criticized from Mexico the initial investigation conducted by the local authorities and said he was full of violations. Mr. Gertz said that local officials failed to secure the site after locating for the first time six months ago by members of the National Guard, and it was “abandoned” shortly after.

He said that these investigators did not trust or record evidence that they found on the site, nor did they take the fingerprints in the place. Since then, the country’s public prosecutor’s office has been investigated at the request of President Claudia Shinbom.

Journalists in the New York Times went to the camp by the size of football surrounded by cement walls on Thursday.

All the evidence revealed by the research group – by the authorities, dozens of investigators, law enforcement employees and forensic experts. Small yellow flags permeated the closed terrain, where each one discovered a place where investigators revealed evidence.

Inside a large warehouse with a roof of tin, where the search group discovered piles of clothes and shoes, the space now stood empty in a frightening way. Three chicken wandered through silence. On the ground, one candle flashes.

The trash, empty beer boxes and broken glass fragments scattered on the floor. Partially buried car tires and barbed wires were distinguished by the area where the authorities believe that the cartel has trained its sexual.

Small holes, not greater than the trash, spread to the ground like salt, which is left by criminal anthropologists who dug the soil in search of human residue or other evidence.

Several large drilling sites have been cordoned off by the yellow police tape.

The previous day, Mrs. Gonzalez was finally allowed, only to discover all the evidence that was transferred. I left there with a mixture of comfort and disappointment. “As a mother, I feel comfortable, but I want to end this suffering,” she said.

More than three years ago, Josel, the son of Mrs. Gonzalez, disappeared after he was recruited to the mobile phone store in Bouella, in the center of Mexico, through a Facebook advertisement. At the age of 18 and near graduation, he went out to support his family when Mrs. Gonzalez fell ill with the pneumonia that he left unable to work.

Soon after the news of the extermination camp appeared two weeks ago, the authorities published a catalog with pictures of more than 1500 elements inside the farm. Mrs. Gonzalez said she got to know Josel’s backpack.

She collected enough money to buy a plane ticket to Galisco to see herself if the backpack truly belongs to her son. Perhaps, in this little confirmation, you can find some clarity, and perhaps even some peace.

Many families from all over Mexico have looked out of the photos, desperately searched for the signs of their missing relatives. Some have admitted and rushed to Guadalajara, the capital of Galisco, in the hope of finding answers.

While the discovery of the farm shocked the nation, news of the emergence of new collective graves and buried victims has become a common event in Galissco, which has the largest number of disappearances in Mexico.

Just two days before Izaguirre, The Searching Warriors of Jalisco Group got information about a mass grave on a residential property in Guadalajara. There, they discovered 13 bags containing human residues buried in the backyard, according to Raul Servin, one of the leaders of the research group.

He said that the residents were not aware of the existence of the grave.

Seven years ago, Mr. Servín was forced to become an anthropologist of some kind when his 20 -year -old son Raul disappeared without trace. A woman from a different research organization taught by the skills he would need: how to choose the correct shovel to dig and learn about the specific hollow sound that the Earth issued when underestimating it – a sign that something, or someone, may be buried under it.

He now divides working days as a waiter and responds to hundreds of calls with advice for possible sites for collective graves through Guadalajara. It goes, shovel at hand, inspects the terrain and drilling, looking for missing victims. In seven years, he said, he found hundreds of bodies.

He does this to try to give families some peace.

“A pair of shoes does not give you a corpse to bury her and go to visit in a cemetery, or any clarity of what happened to my son,” said Mr. Servín, 53.

His son is among more than 15,000 people who disappeared in the state of Galissco. Many of these cases are believed to be linked to Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

As the criminal group expanded its territory throughout the state in recent years, the number of murders and disappearances has escaped in Galisco.

Ulises Ruiz, the local photographer who was with the search group when they discovered the farm site earlier this month, broke the widespread disappearance of Jalisco into a pandemic, noting that the phenomenon has grown significantly, affecting more and more people.

“As happened with Kovid, we thought it was happening elsewhere, in other states or cities,” he said. “But suddenly, everyone around you has a member of your family or knows someone who has disappeared.”

James Wagner The reports contributed.