Two hundred pairs of shoes have been found at a clandestine crematorium on a ranch in the Mexican state of Jalisco, in a disturbing demonstration of the country’s crisis of forced disappearance related to organised crime.
Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, a collective of relatives of the disappeared, found the crematorium following an anonymous tip-off, and the authorities have since confirmed the presence of burnt remains and empty bullet casings.
The collective suspects that the bones belong to disappeared people.
“They have to do an exhaustive inspection. We ask that they bring the dogs … that are certified to find human remains and bones,” Índira Navarro, a representative of the collective, told AFP.
The crematorium was found on a ranch that was secured by authorities several months ago, in an operation that led to the arrest of 10 armed people, the release of two that had been kidnapped, and the discovery of a body.
The ranch, which included a rudimentary kind of obstacle course, is thought to have been used as a recruitment and training centre for new members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
The Jalisco cartel, recently declared a foreign terrorist organisation by the Trump administration, is one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups and is involved in the trafficking of drugs and people across the country and internationally.
Authorities said they had been unable to explore the extensive ranch fully when they first found it, and that the ovens and bones found this week had been “hidden under a layer of earth and a brick slab, which prevented their detection in the initial inspection”.
When members of the collective arrived at the ranch this week, they found a shed with clothing, handbags, backpacks, suitcases and shoes scattered across the ground. Within a few hours they found the first of three underground ovens.
Authorities are yet to determine how many people the remains found on the ranch may belong to.
According to the National Search Commission, Jalisco has almost 15,000 missing people, making it the state with the most disappeared people in Mexico.
Across Mexico, more than 100,000 people are registered as disappeared. But that figure could be an undercount, given that many fear to report cases to the authorities.
