Mexico's attorney general says ranch was used for cartel training, but
no mass graves found
[April 30, 2025]
By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A ranch in the western Mexican state of Jalisco was
used for cartel recruitment and training, but federal investigators
found no evidence of bodies being burned there, Attorney General
Alejandro Gertz Manero said Tuesday.
Gertz Manero said it was “absolutely proven” that the ranch had been
used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for recruitment and training
since 2021.
In March, relatives searching for missing family members inspected the
ranch and reported finding hundreds of pieces of clothing and numerous
bone fragments. They alerted that it could have been a mass killing
site.
Gertz Manero said Tuesday that besides the initial body found by
authorities last September, he could not confirm that there were others.
The Jalisco Search Warriors group visited the ranch in Teuchitlan, about
37 miles (60 kilometers) from Guadalajara that was originally found by
National Guard troops last September.
At that time, authorities said 10 people were arrested, two hostages
were freed and a body was found. They described it as a cartel training
site. The state prosecutor’s office went in with a backhoe, dogs and
devices to find inconsistencies in the ground, but then the
investigation inexplicably stalled.
The search group had gone to the Izaguirre ranch in March after
receiving an anonymous call.
Inside they went to work with simple tools — picks, shovels and metal
bars — doing the work that state investigators supposedly had done six
months earlier.
What they found embarrassed state authorities and shook Mexico: dozens
of shoes, heaps of clothing and what appeared to be human bone
fragments.
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Police stand guard outside the entrance of the Izaguirre Ranch where
skeletal remains were discovered in Teuchitlan, Jalisco state,
Mexico, March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandra Leyva, File)
Eventually, the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office published photos of
the shoes and other clothing items found at the site on a web page where
families searching for relatives could see them.
Following the uproar, the federal government took over the case.
Gertz Manero said his office would make those pieces of evidence
available to those looking for missing relatives.
He said the state Human Rights Commission had formally told local
authorities about the ranch in 2021, but nothing was apparently done.
The group of volunteer searchers expressed disappointment with Gertz
Manero's statements Tuesday.
Raúl Servín, a member of the Jalisco Search Warriors, said that things
had only gotten worse since they raised the alarm about the ranch in
March. Last week, he said, a member of their group, María del Carmen
Morales, was killed.
He said his group had sufficient evidence that bodies were burned at the
site. “They want to let the days pass and the people to forget all of
this, and we can't forget this,” he said, and mentioned the possibility
of taking the case to the United Nations to seek support in the
investigation.
So far, some 15 people have been arrested, including three local police
from the neighboring town of Tala and a member of the Jalisco New
Generation Cartel who worked as a recruiter.
Mexico has struggled with a plague of disappearances for decades and the
official count now exceeds 127,000.
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