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Gulf Insider
16-03-2025
- Gulf Insider
Cremation Ovens, Teeth And Torture: Grisly 'Extermination Camp' Found In Mexico
On a quest to find loved ones who've gone missing in Mexico's years-long plague of gang-driven disappearances, a group of volunteers has discovered a ghastly, bone-strewn 'extermination camp' in a rural village near Guadalajara, complete with cremation ovens. Their shock was compounded by the knowledge that police first learned about the site months ago but did little to investigate it. Some witnesses say the site was used to hold men who were abducted with the intent to force them into joining a criminal cartel — and to teach torture techniques. The first of an unknown quantity of human remains have yet to be identified, but the site near the village of La Estanzuela holds at least 700 personal items, including some that appear have belonged to women and children — such as a blue summer dress, a small pink backpack and high-heel shoes, the New York Times reports. Those and other shoes may offer one of the best indications of the potential number of people killed and/or processed at the site: There are hundreds of them. 'The number of victims that presumably could have been buried there is enormous, and it resurfaced the nightmarish reminder that Mexico is plagued with mass graves,' Mexican security analyst Eduardo Guerrero told the Times, saying what's been already uncovered is reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps. The volunteers' discovery of all the disturbing evidence at the small, abandoned ranch outside Mexico's second-largest city came after tips about the site's existence were left on a Facebook page run by a group of citizens who are searching for missing people, the Washington Post reports. Upon traveling to the site in western Mexico, they nudged the unlocked gate open, and soon found themselves gazing into a kind of hell. Their discoveries included three underground ovens — presumably used for cremations. Using the crudest of methodologies — poking metal rods into the dirt and then withdrawing them and smelling them — they found human remains that included several hundred bone scorched bone shards. The tips left on their Facebook page had been confirmed: They'd discovered an 'extermination camp,' to use Mexican parlance. Eerily, the site also held several figurines of Santa Muerte. Also called 'Our Lady of Holy Death' or 'the Bony Lady,' Santa Muerte is typically depicted as a female skeletal figure in a cape who holds a scythe in one hand and an Earth-globe in the other. Memorably depicted in Breaking Bad , the figure is viewed as something of a protector of criminal gangs, who frequently build altars to glorify her. These altars are often adorned with offerings such as cash, alcohol, and religious items. Far worse, gang members are said to sometimes offer human sacrifices. 'They stole children from other towns and sacrificed them in front of her when they wanted to land a big hit,' a former gang member told AFP earlier this year. The 'Jalisco Search Warriors' fruitful citizen-led investigation has caused a scandal in Mexico, with citizens outraged to learn that police first visited the site last September. Despite arresting 10 people, freeing two hostages and finding a body shrouded in plastic at the time, the police failed to uncover the enormity of the site's significance. It's still unclear who operated the site and for how long. Authorities suspect the notoriously violent and increasingly dominant Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is responsible. The group is a force in illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine, extortion, logging and gasoline markets. People have approached the Jalisco Search Warriors to give their own personal insights into what went on the sinister site. The volunteer group's leader, Indira Navarro, says the gang would use phony employment advertisements to lure men to a Guadalajara bus station. Gang members would meet them there and whisk them off to the extermination camp. They said they arrived in the Guadalajara area expecting to meet their employers and were instead taken to the ranch and forced to undergo military-style training. Some people who failed or didn't follow orders were killed, and their bodies cut up in pieces, according to the accounts. Others died of dehydration or beatings. The recruits were forced to dig the holes, then build makeshift ovens out of bricks and stones, they said. — Washington Post Others say the curriculum at the camp included torture techniques, with failing students purportedly meeting a fate straight out of a Hollywood movie: Ms. Navarro recounted how one young man had told her that the young recruits were at times forced to burn their victims as part of their training. If they objected to the orders of their trainers, the recruits were sometimes fed to wild animals, like lions, she said. — NYT Forcible disappearances have a history in Mexico that's even longer than many people appreciate: Data started being collected in 1962, and more than 120,000 people have vanished over that span. With countless gang members waltzing across the southern border during the Biden era — and Trump's mass deportations still just another unkept campaign promise — how long until cartel extermination camps start blossoming in America?
Fox News
16-03-2025
- Fox News
'Extermination' site discovered in Mexico with cremation ovens, human remains
For families in Mexico searching for missing loved ones, the grim discovery of what is being called an "extermination" site with human remains and ovens, could be their worst fears some true. Mexican authorities are now investigating the site in the western state of Jalisco, first found last week by a group of volunteers that was believed, by the volunteers, to have been used by one of the area's cartels known as the New Generation Jalisco Cartel. Inside its iron gates were an increasing number of horrors, including cremation ovens, bone fragments, hundreds of pairs of shoes, clothing and even children's toys. "They'd see the shoes and say: 'those look like the ones my missing relative was wearing when they disappeared,'" Luz Toscano, one of the volunteers, told BBC News. The ranch, near the village of Teuchitlán, was raided last September by Mexican authorities who failed to find or reveal the discovery of human remains. At the time of the raid, 10 arrests were made, two hostages were released, and a body was found wrapped in plastic. After authorities began searching this week, they said they also found almost 100 shell casings. None of the remains have been identified, and the number is not yet known, but the number of personal items left behind is around 700. "The number of the victims that presumably could have been buried there is enormous," Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst in Mexico City, told The New York Times. "And it resurfaced the nightmarish reminder that Mexico is plagued with mass graves." The discovery, based on an anonymous tip, has dominated the headlines, shocking a country that has become inured by mass graves and promoted citizens to call on authorities to crack down on cartel violence. There are 120,000 "forcibly disappeared" people in Mexico. Jalisco state Gov. Pablo Lemus told critics in a video message this week that his office is fully cooperating with federal investigators and no one is "washing their hands" of the case, according to BBC News. The ranch in Teuchitlan, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Guadalajara was allegedly being used as a training base for cartel recruits when National Guard troops found it last September.
