[Image: Wikicommons]
Mexican police have confirmed the discovery of an “extermination camp” on a ranch in Jalisco, Mexico, that cartels allegedly used to kill missing people.
Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, a group dedicated to finding disappeared people, discovered the site last week at a ranch believed to have been a criminal group’s center of operations. The site was allegedly used to recruit and train people against their will.
The organisation also found at least three crematoriums with incinerated skeletal remains as well as dozens of personal items such as clothing, hundreds of pairs of shoes, backpacks, IDs and lists of names and nicknames.
Indira Navarro, a representative of Warrior Searchers, told CNN that the existence of these types of “forced recruitment and extermination centers” was “an open secret” but that they had never seen one until an anonymous tip led them to the ranch near Teuchitlán.
Mexican authorities, however, claim that the site was known to them, having been originally discovered in September 2024 during an operation carried out by the National Guard in which 10 people were arrested, two kidnapped people were released, and one person was found dead.
Mexican police claimed they found weapons, vests, bullets and “two batches of thermally exposed skeletal remains.” It wasn’t, however, until the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco’s visit last week that the crematoriums were discovered.
Human rights organizations and relatives of the disappeared have now suggested that the local authorities may have covered up the existence of the “extermination camp.”
“It is impossible to accept that this mega-extermination camp (Teuchitlán) operated without the complicity of authorities or security forces.”
When approached for comment about the allegations, local authorities told the media that it “does not issue opinions on statements made by actors from any sphere of society.” We’ve all seen Sicario, so you wouldn’t expect anyone to say anything.
Mexico’s Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz Manero, however, seems to think there may have been a cover-up, saying that “it is not credible that a situation of this nature would not have been known to the local authorities of that municipality and the state.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has now called for a thorough investigation into the site.
[Source: CNN]
