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- Families have flocked to a ranch a drug cartel once used as a training site, hoping to find signs of a missing loved one.
- Bodies were burned at the ranch, but the death toll is unknown.
- Hundreds of shoes and other belongings were discovered at the site.
TEUCHITL?N, Mexico — The anguished mother arrived on a motorcycle, the bike kicking up a cloud of dust as it swerved to a halt before strands of red and yellow crime-scene tape. Heavily armed cops blocked access to the place known as Rancho Izaguirre. But even from far off, María Luz Ruiz said she sensed his presence.
“I feel that my son was here,” she said, 12 years after he vanished.
She was among a steady stream of relatives of the missing arriving at the ranch entrance, all hoping to find some trace of vanished loved ones. On a shirtsleeve, Ruiz wore a purple-and-white ribbon — an homage to the disappeared — while a white rose poked out from the top of a bag.
Police in riot gear blocked her and others from proceeding down the unpaved entry road, lined with stands of prickly pear cactus, here in the outskirts of Teuchitlán, a town now tainted with the horrors, real and imagined, of Rancho Izaguirre — a former cartel training camp.
“Teuchitlán: National Shame,” read a banner at an angry rally last weekend in Guadalajara, where protesters chanted, “Narcos out!” and assailed politicians’ complicity with organized crime. For relatives of the missing, the barren site outside Teuchitlán has become a pilgrimage site, a place to pay respects to those lost.
In the escalating war among rival factions of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán are suspected of ordering the destruction of elaborate mausoleums that belong to rival families, including one for a fallen grandson of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
The ranch was thrust into Mexico’s ever-expanding registry of notorious places after civilian searchers this month discovered mounds of clothing — hundreds of shoes, shirts, pants, backpacks, suitcases — along with IDs, photos, charred human bones and underground crematoria. Shoes have become the new symbol of Mexico’s disappeared.
What happened to the owners of the discarded items remains a mystery. Many are presumed to have been killed, their remains possibly among those disposed of at the site.
Some former ranch occupants were tricked via promises of security guard jobs and other legitimate work, according to human rights activists and relatives of the missing. But some may have known it served as a cartel training center and had gone there willingly. Many Mexican youth are drawn to the often-idealized world of the drug cartels — which are among Mexico’s largest employers — with its lure of easy cash and an adrenaline-churning lifestyle celebrated in countless ballads and cinematic treatments.
Some former occupants of Rancho Izaguirre probably completed their apprenticeships and went on to become sicarios, or hit men, for organized crime, ditching their civilian clothing for cartel uniforms, Mexican Atty. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Mareno told reporters Wednesday.
The discovery of the camp has revived the national debate in Mexico about how to find justice for the country’s multitudes of “disappeared” — now numbering more than 120,000, mostly victims of organized crime. The ledger of desaparecidos grows every day, especially here in Jalisco. The western state, famed for tequila, mariachi music and Mexican rodeos, or charreadas, is also home to one of Mexico’s most powerful crime syndicates, the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
They gather shortly after daybreak outside a minimarket, the tropical heat thickening, the dawn haze in lethargic retreat.
In response to the national outcry, authorities took the unusual step of uploading the images of more than 1,000 items seized — shoes, jeans, T-shirts, backpacks and much more. Throughout Mexico, relatives and acquaintances of the missing have been poring over images, both hopeful and fearful of recognizing an object.
“I looked but didn’t find anything,” said María del Rosario Ayala at the Guadalajara protest.
Her daughter, Mayra Alejandra, disappeared in November 2022 (she was 21), presumably taken by human traffickers, said the mother, who, like many others, donned a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of her disappeared loved one. “I had hopes of maybe seeing the sneakers she wore. But nothing.”
Before the macabre discovery in the sun-baked cane fields here, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum seldom alluded to the disappeared — though she regularly cites declining numbers of homicides, down from record highs a few years ago. Now, she has vowed a thorough investigation and moved to clear bureaucratic obstacles for people engaged in doleful quests for the missing.
Legions of civilian searchers across Mexico, often women digging up clandestine graves with spades and pickaxes, have become modern-day folk heroes — though almost two dozen have been killed, apparent victims of retaliation from gangs angered by their activism.
“Our feelings are with the families of the disappeared,” Sheinbaum told reporters Monday. “We know of their need and longing to be united with their loved ones.”
Gertz, the attorney general, has said that it is “not credible” that local authorities didn’t know about goings-on at the ranch. Collusion between gangs and police and politicians has long impeded justice in Mexico, nurturing a culture of impunity. State authorities, Gertz said, failed to follow up properly last year when a National Guard raid on the ranch culminated in the arrests of 10 suspects, the liberation of two captives and the discovery of the plastic-wrapped body of a victim with a bashed-in head.
The public announcement made at the time of the raid made no mention of the clothing, IDs, notebooks, bones and other items encountered this month at the site. Forensic authorities are now examining the accumulated evidence, the attorney general said.
Teuchitlán is a bustling agricultural hub of 40,000 near the touristy “tequila route,” a road lined with expanses of sugar cane and agave, the spiky plant that yields tequila. Now it’s a destination for the mournful and desperate.
Ruiz, 60, herself a searcher for several years, came to the isolated site to seek traces of her son, Elias Sánchez Ruiz, who, she said, was kidnapped Jan. 14, 2013, never to be seen again. Then 32, he cut, planted and helped process agave for the tequila industry.
“I’m sure he was here,” she repeated, before riding off with her partner, frustrated at being turned back from the entrance. By then the rose she carried had wilted in the sun.
Like Ruiz, Paula ?vila, another searcher who visited the site, said the place gave her the chills.
“I felt a sense of foreboding,” said ?vila, whose son, Luis Fernando Cota ?vila, an Uber driver, disappeared April 23, 2022, when he was 32. “I felt a pain in my chest, a feeling of desperation. I wanted to cry. I haven’t calmed down since.”
Following a tip, a distraught mother digs into the foundation of a house, hoping to find the body of her son.
A sense of collective guilt has descended upon Teuchitlán, where on Sunday more than a half-dozen priests — led by Father Engelberto Polino Sánchez, auxiliary bishop of Guadalajara — presided over a Mass for the missing at the Ascension of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church.
In a show of solidarity, residents of the town placed bows of purple and white outside their homes and shops as demonstrators marched to the church. Participants demanded an accounting of the fates of their missing. A group of church-organized youth held a white banner bearing the names of vanished people.
“We will not tire from looking for our disappeared,” the bishop told the overflow crowd of hundreds packed inside the church and in seats arrayed outside. “I pray for those who are disappeared, for those who have already died, for those who are still alive, although we don’t know where they are.”
In front of the the altar, worshipers placed offerings of shoes, suitcases and photos of the disappeared. The bishop held up the shoes and a suitcase in a display of shared concern.
Townsfolk sought separation from the depravities of Rancho Izaguirre. “We want Teuchitlán to be a place of life, not of death,” said Father Luis Miguel González, among those celebrating the service.
A few miles away, at the site of the former cartel training camp, families pleaded with police guards to be let into the ranch. Some wondered whether their loved ones had perished on this desolate spot. But it was no use. A group of attorneys who said they represent families of disappeared people was also turned away. Waved in and out, however, was a constant procession of pickup trucks transporting investigators and forensic experts.
There are thousands of families suffering from losses like ours
— Patricio Gaxiola Romero, whose son went missing
Patricio Gaxiola Romero was among those who arrived, with his family. He didn’t really expect to be allowed in, he said, but wanted to catch a glimpse, show support for the searchers.
His son, Sebastián Gaxiola Cruz, was kidnapped from his home in the town of Tonalá at midnight on July 16, 2022, he said. The son was 24 at the time.
The kidnappers demanded a ransom of 700,000 pesos, about $35,000, which the family paid, the father said. But his son was never seen again. He left behind two children, a 3-year-old girl and a 2-month-old son.
“There are thousands of families suffering from losses like ours,” said Gaxiola, standing outside the entrance to the ranch, where police, journalists and families of the missing lingered, gazing toward the former training grounds, a quarter of a mile away. “If we keep our mouths shut, this will keep happening. We all need to maintain the pressure to fight the corruption that leads to this kind of tragedy in our country. We cannot live in fear.”
Gaxiola and his family soon drove off, leaving the ranch and environs to the police and investigators gathering clues to this unfathomable discovery that has transfixed Mexico.
Special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and Liliana Nieto del Río contributed to this report.
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