Latest news with #SantaMuerte
Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Desperate cartels turn to 'demonic' desert ritual to try and cross the border during Trump's migrant crackdown
Just a few feet from the border wall, smugglers have built a shrine to the cartel patron saint. With crossing the border tougher than ever before during President Donald Trump 's immigration crackdown, they hope a last act of God might help them sneak into the United States. An alter to Santa Muerte that's been a favorite of cartels for years has been set up just outside El Paso, Texas in Mexico. Worship of the cloaked skeleton figure has been condemned by the Catholic Church, and her images are often found on suspected traffickers when they're ferrying drugs and people into the US. While it's not new for Mexican cartels to turn to the saint of 'holy death', shrines to her are now popping up in greater numbers in an area of Mexico known for being a cartel hot bed. Rancho Anapra, as the neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez is known, is now filled with tributes to Santa Muerte, including one placed strategically within view of US Border Patrol agents holding the line on the international boundary. 'This is the face of evil that we're facing as a law enforcement agency,' Border Patrol spokesman Claudio Herrera-Baeza told while touring the well-known smuggling corridor. In this part of the border, three cartels run the show: La Linea, La Impresa and the Sinaloa Cartel, Border Patrol added. 'It's the Border Patrol against cartel operations. We know that cartels often use these types of images believing that they will receive some type of protection. In reality, it's demonic. It's pure evil. Believers in Santa Muerte leave offerings including fruit, bread, bottles of tequila, money, candles and other tokens. In exchange, smugglers hope the narco icon will bring them safe passage, wealth and also serve as a way of intimidating others. The female embodiment of death is often depicted standing on a bed of skulls, wearing a hooded and holding a globe in one hand and a sickle in the other. One statue seized by the DEA from two women accused of transporting meth from the border to Minnesota in 2011. Wearing a robe made of fake US $100 bills, gold glitter and imitation jewels, the statue doubled as a contraband hiding spot with its hallow interior. The shrine at the border wall appeared in recent weeks, after Pres. Donald Trump took office in January and began an unprecedented tightening of security. A candle was burning the morning visited and a baseball hat hung on the lock used to secure the shrine in a glass case. 'Rancho Anapra has been known for multiple years as one of the focal points for smuggling,' the Border Patrol spokesman explained. 'If you go to the other side of the border, you will see multiple shrines, not only to Santa Muerte but also to (Jesus) Malverde. It's is a well known saint or patron to the cartels.' A candle was burning the morning visited last week and a baseball hat hung on the lock used to secure the shrine in a glass case. Not only are tributes to Santa Muerte growing, but traffickers are also seeking help from Jesus Malverde, another narco saint. Known as the Robin Hood in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, Malverde is a folk hero cartels venerate for protection and to increase profits. The number of illegal crossings into the US have plummet since the Republican president took over compared to the Joe Biden years. In El Paso, the law enforcement agency went from seeing 2,700 migrant encounters a day under Biden to between 50 and 60 a day now. 'We pretty sure that we are hurting their finances,' Herrera-Baeza stated. 'When you start affecting their work, you start affecting a whole network that they have created. We know that violence might rise.' The agency is readying itself in case agents are attacked. Cartels won't hestiate to turn to violence if profits drop. The government best estimate is that the trafficking of migrants into the US is a $13 billion a year business. 'We know that a lot of people believe in this type of way to make profit,' he added. 'We have seen multiple of these properties used as stash house. They will place migrants in brutal conditions before they are able to cross.' Migrants are often staged in the humble homes and shacks of Rancho Anapra. Often starved of food and water, the desperate Central and South Americans hoping for the American dream are kept there until the smugglers deem they can successfully sneak them over the border. In the worst case scenarios, the devotees of Sante Muerte beat, rape and torture the migrants while they have them in their clutches, all while bending a knee to the skeleton woman.
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?
MTV Lebanon
14-03-2025
- MTV Lebanon
Mexicans seek answers after bones, shoes found at cartel camp
A group of families searching for people who have disappeared reported the find this month at a ranch in the western state of Jalisco where forced recruits are thought to have been held. The Guerreros Buscadores collective described the site as an "extermination center" with "clandestine crematoriums," causing shock in a country that has become inured to spiraling cartel-related violence. "We're talking about a recruitment center for our youth," said the group's leader, Indira Navarro. The property had already been searched in September following clashes in the area between the military and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful and violent drug trafficking groups. The Jalisco state prosecutor's office reported at the time that it found skeletal remains. Last week, the collective discovered more buried bones, dozens of shoes, and other objects that apparently went unnoticed during the initial search. The United Nations Human Rights Office on Friday described it as a "deeply disturbing reminder of the trauma of disappearances linked to organized crime across the country." "The discovery is all the more disturbing given that this site had been previously raided as recently as September 2024 by the National Guard and the Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office, without crucial evidence being detected," it added. Following anonymous tip-offs, the collective began digging at the ranch in the remote community of Teuchitlan, accompanied at times by an AFP photographer. In three holes they discovered cremated bone fragments, and what they described as crematoriums. They also found about 200 pairs of shoes, piles of clothing, suitcases, hygiene products, notes about weapons and a letter from a recruit. "My love, if one day I never return, I only ask that you remember how much I love you," wrote a young man who was allegedly kidnapped in February 2024, but who, according to Guerreros Buscadores, returned to his family in October. The group also discovered spent gun cartridges, target practice sheets, and an altar to the "Santa Muerte" (Saint Death), a cult deeply rooted in Mexico's criminal underworld. Since October 2023, groups searching for missing Mexicans have reported the discovery of six more alleged clandestine crematoriums in Jalisco. Hundreds of graves have been discovered elsewhere in the country, such as in Bartolina in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where authorities unearthed 500 kilos of remains between 2017 and 2021 at what they called an "extermination site." The Jalisco prosecutor's office has admitted that its initial investigations in Teuchitlan were "insufficient." "It's not credible that a situation of this nature would not have been known to local authorities," said Mexico's Attorney General Alejandro Gertz, who took over the case this week at the request of President Claudia Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum said more evidence was needed before conclusions could be drawn. After further inspections, the Jalisco prosecutor's office said on Thursday that it had found no "structures that served as ovens," although it continues to search for possible remains. More than 124,000 people have been officially registered as missing in Mexico, mostly since 2006 when the government declared war on drug cartels. Around 480,000 people have been murdered. Jalisco is the state with the most missing persons -- nearly 15,000. Rampant criminal violence, as well as links between corrupt officials and criminal groups, means that Mexico's security and justice institutions are overwhelmed. In 2023, Jalisco had 798 prosecutors investigating 137,100 crimes committed that year, an average of 172 cases per officer, according to official statistics. Around 40 percent of Mexico's missing are men aged 20-39. Jorge Ramirez Plascencia, a researcher at the University of Guadalajara, thinks the shoes and clothing at the ranch probably belonged to forced recruits who were given military-style fatigues after being trained. The remains were likely those of "murdered recruits," he told AFP.
South China Morning Post
14-03-2025
- South China Morning Post
Mexican cartel mystery: hundreds of shoes, charred bones at possible killing site
Even in Mexico, where stories of massacres, kidnappings and clandestine graves provide daily news fodder, the recent revelations in western Jalisco state have caused a commotion. Advertisement Gruesome online images from a ranch apparently once used as a drug cartel training camp show hundreds of discarded shoes, backpacks, pants, shirts and other items, along with pictures of charred bones, bullet casings and clips from high-powered rifles. Among the handwritten entries found in a notebook were numbered columns of nicknames – purportedly a coded ledger of ex-captives – and a farewell letter from someone that read: 'My Love if Some day I don't Return I only ask you to remember how much I Love you'. Inside one cinder-block building at the ranch was a candle-bedecked shrine to Santa Muerte (Holy Death), a female folk saint whose cult is often associated with Mexican organised crime. Izaguirre Ranch. Photo: EPA-EFE Disseminating the disturbing images on social media this month were members of a search group that entered the ranch seeking missing loved ones among Mexico's more than 120,000 'disappeared'. Even the veteran searchers – accustomed to violence, threats and secret graves – were aghast.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Yahoo
Mexican cartel mystery: Abandoned shoes, cryptic writings, charred bones
Even in Mexico, where stories of massacres, kidnappings and clandestine graves provide daily news fodder, the recent revelations in western Jalisco state have caused a commotion. Gruesome online images from a ranch apparently once used as a drug cartel training camp show hundreds of discarded shoes, backpacks, pants, shirts and other items, along with pictures of charred bones, bullet casings and clips from high-powered rifles. Among the handwritten entries found in a notebook were numbered columns of nicknames — purportedly a coded ledger of ex-captives — and a farewell letter from someone that read: 'My Love if Some day I don't Return I only ask you to remember how much I Love you.' Inside one cinder-block building at the ranch was a candle-bedecked shrine to Santa Muerte (Holy Death), a female folk saint whose cult is often associated with Mexican organized crime. Disseminating the disturbing images on social media this month were members of a search group that entered the ranch seeking missing loved ones among Mexico's more than 120,000 'disappeared.' Even the veteran searchers — accustomed to violence, threats and secret graves — were aghast. 'It was a tremendous shock,' recalled Raúl Servín García of Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, one of many volunteer collectives nationwide dedicated to finding vanished loved ones, mostly victims of organized crime. 'The first thought that occurs to you is to hope that no relative — a son, a husband — had ever been in this place, had ever been tortured or murdered there.' Headlines called the ranch an 'extermination camp,' home to underground 'crematoria and, even, the 'Mexican Auschwitz.' The abandoned shoes have emerged on social media as a symbol of outrage about the discovery. Memorials for the victims and protests against forced recruitment by cartels were planned this weekend in Guadalajara, Mexico City and elsewhere. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that federal and state authorities were investigating. "We have isolated photos, but we don't know exactly what was found, how it was found," Sheinbaum told reporters Thursday at her daily news conference. "We have to determine responsibilities based on the information and the investigation." Mexican Atty. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Manero hinted at collusion between organized crime and officials in Jalisco state. It was 'not credible,' Gertz told reporters, that 'a situation of this nature wasn't known by local authorities." The troubling images were captured at Rancho Izaguirre — an arid, two-acre rectangular patch with sheds and other structures situated amid irrigated farmland just 37 miles from downtown Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city. The fate of those whose clothing was found at the ranch — and how many are dead or alive — remains publicly unknown. Media accounts have alternately labeled the ranch a training facility, a torture center, a killing field and a body-disposal site for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's major, and most violent, organized crime syndicates. Mexican officials have not confirmed any of those characterizations. The clothing belonged to young men and women lured to the camp by cartel operatives via bogus job offerings, according to the searchers, who say they have spoken to several survivors and their relatives. Many captives were recruited at a bus station in Tlaquepaque, a Guadalajara suburb, said Servín of the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco. "They met these young people at the bus terminal with phony promises of work," he said. "Many had no idea what they were getting into." Captives who tried to escape, or who didn't measure up to the physical training, faced death, according to Indira Navarro, head of the searchers' collective. In a radio interview, Navarro quoted one anonymous survivor saying that prisoners were forced to kill fellow captives. Cartel operatives have been known to recruit young people with supposedly legitimate opportunities advertised in social media and via word of mouth. On occasion, officials throughout Mexico have busted clandestine cartel training facilities. In January, Jalisco's governor touted the liberation of 36 captives at an organized crime camp in Teuchitlán — the same township where Rancho Izaguirre is situated. Read more: Bitter feud among Sinaloa cartel families brings grim new tactic: Grave desecration Despite the searchers' detailed accounts, officials have provided little insight about what went on at Rancho Izaguirre. Prosecutors say the site included a 'tactical' training area and a physical conditioning zone, along with burial lots. Photos of one area show a kind of obstacle course, crafted of wires lashed onto logs, and another site with tires spaced along the ground — both presumably used for training exercises. According to the Jalisco state prosecutor's office, investigators now combing over the ranch have discovered six groups of charred human bones, some hidden beneath earth and bricks. But officials have provided no estimate on how many people were buried there. Nor have forensic teams identified any of the dead — a task likely to take a long time. In a bid to match items found at the ranch with missing people, prosecutors released photos of almost 500 personal effects, including jeans, T-shirts, blouses, skirts, backpacks and bags. Even before the mass photo dump, relatives of the missing throughout Mexico had been pouring through the images posted online. 'We've received various calls from families saying: 'I think that T-shirt was my son's,'' Servín said. 'But we have to tell them: 'Remain calm. Don't jump to conclusions.' Because it's very hard to think your loved one was murdered in this way, or passed through such profound pain.' A major question in the case is why state authorities didn't follow up aggressively when the National Guard entered Rancho Izaguirre last September. On that occasion, according to Jalisco prosecutors, authorities arrested 10 suspects, who remain in custody—though authorities have not clarified what charges they face. Investigators also found a body, wrapped in plastic, and liberated two captives. Among those apparently freed was the author of the love letter-last testament found in the notebook at the ranch. Prosecutors say the individual — who was not identified — is back home. Read more: Trump administration labels 8 Latin American crime cartels as terrorist organizations In September, forensic teams immediately began to search for bodies at the ranch, Jalisco prosecutors said in a news release this week. But state authorities — now under extreme pressure from the federal government— conceded that that earlier efforts were 'insufficient' and suffered from 'possible omissions," which are now under investigation. There has been no criminal activity at Rancho Izaguirre since September, prosecutors said. According to unconfirmed media reports, the cartel ranch had been in operation since at least 2018. It was an anonymous tip that led the searchers to Rancho Izaguirre on March 5. 'The sensation that runs through your body when you see hundreds and hundreds of shoes piled up like that is indescribable,' said Servín. 'And of course you imagine the worst.' A restaurant waiter by profession, Servín still seeks the remains of his son, who disappeared in 2018, at the age of 20. 'You see the clothing, the shoes, and you can't control yourself,' said Servín. 'The tears come running down your eyes just thinking of the suffering that those poor people endured. One can only pray to God that your loved one was not in that place.' McDonnell is a Times staff writer and Sánchez Vidal is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Liliana Nieto del Río contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
