In January and February of this year, groups of people searching for missing loved ones secretly entered the Izaguirre Ranch in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. There, they found pits containing the remains of burned bones and thousands of personal belongings.
The site in the municipality of Teuchitlán was allegedly used as a recruitment and extermination centre by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The relatives found it with the help of alleged survivors who said they had been held there.
More than 125,000 people have disappeared in Mexico in the past 25 years, half of them since 2019, according to official figures. Some 15,000 are missing from Jalisco alone – more than any other state.
