21-05-2025
Horrifying new cartel 'death camp' where victims were 'tortured, murdered and incinerated' with remains 'sowed in to the soil' is uncovered on 40-hectare Mexican ranch
A horrifying new cartel 'death camp' where victims are believed to have been tortured, murdered and then set alight has been discovered on a massive 40-hectare Mexican ranch.
Activists in the state of Colima, western Mexico, unearthed charred bone fragments on a ranch described as a 'death camp' belonging to the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Horrific photos shared by local activists show entire bones half buried in the soil around the property.
Several pieces of dirty torn clothing were found at the site, alongside several pieces of ID that appeared to identify the cartel's victims. There were at least two burnt out cars on the site.
Authorities who visited the site reportedly found corpses still burning on the 40-hectare farm, with evidence that some may have been torched using chemicals.
Around 40% of the remains were found in a burned state, while other parts were simply buried
One security official told the FT: 'That area is infested with guys from the Jalisco cartel in armoured cars.
'They would bring people up' to the ranch 'to torture them and then bury them — to sow them in the soil'.
Just three of the 42 people's remains have so far been identified. Most of them are believed to have belonged to men between the ages of 25 and 39.
Federal authorities are believed to have known about the ranch since at least 2018, when they arrested a high-profile alleged trafficker there.
He was accused of trafficking drugs from Mexico to the US, and of killing a former Colima governor.
The man linked to the property was reportedly murdered in prison days after his arrest, but criminal groups continued using the site.
For the last two decades, narco groups have regularly been kidnapping and killing civilians in response to the Mexican government's announcement of an all-out war on cartels.
It is believed that 120,000 people have disappeared over the past two decades thanks to cartels.
Years of toil against the cartels has left authorities weary and afraid of stepping up efforts to fight them, leaving the families of people who disappear largely to fight for justice on their own.
Carmen Sepúlveda, who lost her son Carlos Donaldo Campos in 2018, told the FT: 'It's been a constant battle with the authorities. Everyone used to say there were no disappeared people in Colima, but we haven't stopped finding [bodies].'
And now it is feared that CJNG and the 'Los Chapitos' faction of the Sinaloa Cartel have put aside their differences and joined forces to create a massive syndicate that many worry will make them deadlier than the sum of their individual parts.
New video footage that has been shared across social media apparently shows dozens of heavily armed members of both cartels kneeling together in the dead of night.
The person holding the camera says as it pans, referring to a nickname for members of the Los Chapitos cartel: 'This is just about to get started. The rumours are true, the alliance between the New Generation Cartel and La Chapiza is confirmed.'
The cameraman also refers to the head of the CJNG Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as as El Mencho, and to one of Joaquín Guzmán Loera's sons who have been identified as leaders of the notorious gangs.
As the video ends, the group of men fired their weapons into the air in celebration.
The apparent merger, if confirmed, would be a massive shift in cartel politics.
Los Chapitos is an offshoot of the Sinaloa Cartel that has long been fighting with other factions in the massive crime syndicate. It has long considered CJNG a mortal enemy.
In 2016, Jesús and Iván Salazar, two sons of the infamous Sinaloa leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera, were kidnapped by CJNG operatives from a restaurant in an upscale part of Puerto Vallarta, which lies in CJNG territory.
They were later released without harm.
But it appears that Los Chapitos has put aside its hatred for CJNG.
While the exact date of origin of the video is not currently known, it began circulating across the internet just weeks after the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) revealed it was worried that CJNG and Los Chapitos were joining forces.
It said in the memo, released earlier this month, that the move may have come about in response to inter-factional warfare within the Sinaloa Cartel.
The report reads: 'CJNG could capitalize on the conflict between the Los Mayos and Los Chapitos factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, essentially by choosing sides in favour of their former rivals, Los Chapitos, against Los Mayos.'
The DEA said that the consequences of this merger would be catastrophic: 'A strategic alliance between CJNG and Los Chapitos has the potential to expand these groups' territories, resources, firepower, and access to corrupt officials, which could result in a significant disruption to the existing balance of criminal power in Mexico and could serve to increase northbound drug flow and southbound weapons trafficking at the US-Mexico border.'
The reports said in its introduction: 'The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels (CJNG), together with their procurement, distribution, and financial support networks stretching across Latin America, China, and other key global nodes, remain the dominant threats for the trafficking of these and other drugs into the United States.'
In his introduction to the 2025 DEA report, Acting Administrator Robert Murphy wrote that these groups are 'the primary groups oroducing the illicit synthetic drugs driving US drug poisoning deaths and trafficking these drugs into the United States.'
He wrote: 'The cartels are not only fuelling the drug poisoning deaths in the United States, but also committing egregious acts of violence, threatening the security and stability of our partners across the Western Hemisphere.'
