A group of volunteers in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas made another grim discovery over the weekend. Concretely, Colectivo Amor por los Desaparecidos, comprised of families searching for missing loved ones, uncovered a new site allegedly used by criminal groups to kill and cremate their victims.
Volunteers located the property on April 13 in a remote area of Río Bravo, a municipality along the U.S. border that neighbors Reynosa, the most populous city in Tamaulipas.
According to Mexican outlet Proceso, the collective has now discovered 23 such properties in the Reynosa area this year.
Group members found multiple human remains at the property, including a skull, a jawbone, and several more bones scattered around. According to the group's official report, multiple pieces of clothing and personal items that could belong to more than one victim were also found at the scene.
State authorities and forensic experts are now conducting investigations to determine the victims' sex, age and other data that can facilitate their identification.
The discovery adds to a long list of similar findings made by the volunteer group in the northern region of Tamaulipas, particularly in the municipalities of Reynosa, Matamoros and Río Bravo, where clandestine graves, safe houses and sites allegedly used for human extermination have been documented.
Another property was found by the collective last month. Located 10 miles west of the Reynosa city center, it was also allegedly used by criminal groups as a clandestine crematorium. In the last month four such properties have been discovered across the state.
According to Edith González, president of Colectivo Amor por los Desaparecidos, there were at least 14 different spots along the property with calcined human remains and other personal items.
With an average of nearly two such properties discovered every week, González and other activists have asked state authorities for more support, arguing that it is time "they start to take action."
"We cannot allow this to keep happening," González said in a video posted on social media. Tamaulipas is essentially a massive clandestine cemetery," she added.
The activist also mentioned that the use of clandestine crematoriums is not "an isolated incident" but instead is a "systematic practice," saying state authorities should be doing more to investigate the issue.
"Governor Américo Villarreal Anaya refuses to acknowledge the reality in Tamaulipas. We regularly come across these extermination sites in Reynosa... We're not living in a bubble, sitting behind a desk in Congress," she added.
For years, the state of Tamaulipas has been one of the entities in Mexico with the highest number of disappearances reported.
According to data from the National Search Commission for Missing Persons in Mexico, the border state sits on third place nationally with a total of 13,201 reports of individuals that have gone missing since the 1950s, with 285 of them being reported missing between October 2024 and March 2025.
© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
