Mexicans rarely express outrage commensurate with the country’s suffering. But the discovery on March 8th of three cremation ovens, bones and hundreds of shoes at a ranch in Teuchitlán, in the state of Jalisco, has sparked real shock. The horror has reignited fury over Mexico’s epidemic of disappearances—and the government’s inaction. “Mexico is a mass grave,” read one sign at a vigil.
Disappearances became common after 2006, when the government’s “war on drugs” caused rivalries between splintering gangs. They rose sharply during the six-year presidential term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which ended last year. In 2024 an average of 37 people disappeared every day. The figure has risen to 40 since October. Most are young men, often entangled with gangs. Others are unrelated. The Teuchitlán ranch appears to have been used by Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Mexico’s most brutal criminal organisation. Victims probably included those who had been forcibly recruited and killed after they failed to pass training.
Most of the disappeared are presumably dead. Burning the bodies is one method of hiding the crime; others include dissolving them in acid or burying them in the desert. Nearly 6,000 clandestine graves have been found. Mexico’s forensic services hold the remains of 72,000 unidentified people, some of who may be on the missing-persons register. The full scale of the crisis is unknown. The official register of 124,000 missing is certainly far too low. Add confirmed killings to the disappearances, and the picture is clear: the risk of being murdered in Mexico is rising.
Disappearances are given little attention because that suits politicians and criminals alike. Officials point to falling murder numbers and fail to mention the rise in disappearances. Criminal groups dispose of bodies because it helps them avoid investigation. “The state doesn’t look for missing people,” says Francisco Rivas of the National Citizen Observatory, an NGO in Mexico City. The country’s many collectives—volunteer groups of relatives of the missing, mainly mothers—do the work of the authorities. One such group unearthed the evidence at the ranch (and have since received threats). Only weeks earlier government security forces had supposedly searched the site and found little.
The discovery has put pressure on Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, who has promised to improve security since taking office in October. She would not have to do much to beat Mr López Obrador’s record. His “hugs not bullets” policy allowed gangs to flourish. More people went missing during his tenure than under the previous two presidents combined. He refused to meet mothers searching for their children, and dismissed activists as seeking to smear his government.
Ms Sheinbaum appears to want to take a more serious approach. Although her government initially blamed bots for amplifying the outrage about Teuchitlán, she has since then outlined six steps to take. They include creating a national database of unidentified bodies; scrapping the practice in some states of waiting for 72 hours before registering someone as missing; and strengthening the National Search Commission, a government body, which will get better equipment, including drones.
Yet activists and relatives say that most of these pledges are not new and fall far short of what is needed. The powers they are talking about already exist, says María Isabel Cruz, who has been looking for her son since 2017. “They need to actually apply them.” Mexico spends too little on security, let alone the disappeared. Forensic experts are lacking.
A thornier obstacle is political. In many places criminals work with local officials to cover up, or even perpetrate, disappearances. Many doubt that officials knew nothing about happenings at the ranch, which is under an hour from Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-biggest city. Mexico’s attorney-general appeared to downplay the issue by suggesting there was not enough evidence to describe the ranch as an “extermination site”. He then failed to turn up to a visit on March 20th by journalists and relatives of the missing, who were dismayed to see that evidence had been removed or improperly secured. A man alleged to be the leader of the training camp has since been arrested.
History does not inspire confidence that what happened at Teuchitlán will be properly investigated, much less resolved. Ms Sheinbaum has set up a new investigation into the Ayotzinapa case, a notorious incident in 2014 when 43 male student teachers went missing in Iguala in the south-western state of Guerrero. Their parents still do not know what happened to their sons or where their bodies are. On Paseo de la Reforma, a grand avenue in Mexico City, the teachers’ faces stare out from posters. Most passers-by barely notice. Families who believe their relatives perished in Teuchitlán can only hope to learn the truth before indifference sets in. ■
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