An abandoned ranch in western Mexico that groups looking for missing relatives had described as a “extermination field” – by discarded personal objects and burned remains found there – was a training center of an important cartel, the Attorney General of Mexico announced Tuesday. However, he said that “there is not a single test that accredits” that the ranch was a place of human incinerations.
In a press conference in which he presented the conclusions of his office so far in the case, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said he was “totally proven” that the Izaguirre ranch in Teuchitlán, a town near Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, had been used as a recruitment center, training and operations by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most violent criminal organizations in the country. He said that conclusion was based on testimonies and documents.
But, departing from previous comments, Gertz insisted that there was no evidence of incinerations in the ranch.
Gertz said the authorities that originally discovered the ranch in September found a container with very small bone fragments. He said that studies carried out by a University of Mexico City on tests, land and other materials did not find heat levels greater than 200 degrees Celsius. The cremations, he said, requires levels greater than 800 degrees.
Earlier this month, Gertz said the researchers had not found trials of crematoriums at the ranch, but that some human remains found there had “traces of some kind of cremation.” And the Secretary of Citizen Security and Protection, Omar García Harfuch, said last month that, based on the testimony of a detained person, the cartel came to kill who resisted training or tried to escape.
On Tuesday, Gertz said that, apart from the only corpse found by the authorities in September, when the National Guard exchanged shots with the people of the ranch, the researchers had not found more bodies or bones.
The ditches and holes on the ground – which a search group had believed that they were crematorium ovens – were fires, Gertz said.
Héctor Flores, leader of a Jalisco state search group, said in a telephone interview that the search groups continued to believe that the ranch had been a place of extermination and that people had been incinerated there, due to what they had found last month. He said that officials were using a technical language in an effort to change the narrative.
“That the government wants to call it as you want to call it, but I think that the society of Mexico is already mature enough and awakens in this issue of Izaguirre to believe the lies of the federal government,” he said.
Gertz said the authorities had no idea how many people could have been recruited or missing in the ranch. He said that the Forensic team continued to study the bone fragments to identify them, a task that has been complicated by their small size.
On Tuesday, Gertz reminded the public on several occasions that the investigation was ongoing and that his office has only had control of the case since the end of March, when President Claudia Sheinbaum asked him to take over.
After at the beginning of March a group of volunteers who were looking for their missing relatives received a clue on a possible hidden common grave in western Mexico, the photos of lots of shoes and clothing shocked a country already marked by numerous episodes of brutal violence and clandestine graves.
More than 120 thousand people have disappeared in Mexico since the country began to keep a record in 1962, according to official data. More than 15 thousand have disappeared in the state of Jalisco, and it is believed that many of the cases are related to the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.
Last month, Gertz criticized the investigation carried out by local authorities and said he had been full of irregularities. The local authorities failed to ensure the place after it was first located in September, and was abandoned until the search group arrived last month.
On Tuesday, Gertz said that a State Human Rights Commission of Jalisco informed the local authorities of illegal activities in the ranch in 2021 “and did nothing.” Among the 14 people currently arrested in relation to the case, Gertz said that there are three local police, including a police chief, as well as a person whom the authorities have identified as a cartel leader who supervised the training center.
“We are going to pursue those who covered or participated” in the operations of the cartel in the ranch, said Gertz, noting that this included public officials. He also said that his office was investigating other possible “narcorrancos” in the area.
Subscriber content
As for the clothing bags that were found in the place – but they have not been studied by local authorities – Gertz said he did not know those who belonged. But he said that federal researchers had planned to collaborate with the search groups to help identify the objects and perhaps link them to their owners through forensic evidence.