The discovery of underground ovens and 200 pairs of shoes at an alleged training camp and killing site for Mexico's Jalisco cartel has sent shockwaves throughout the country. Activists from Warrior Searchers of Jalisco discovered the site. It is located close to the town of Teuchitlán, roughly 60km from Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. The Jalisco cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organized crime groups, is thought to have run this creepy facility. That announcement has led to protests across the country. Artists and activists are using this opportunity to draw attention to Mexico’s long-standing forced disappearance crisis linked to organized crime.
Jalisco alone has close to 15,000 missing people, and a national total of more than 120,000 registered as missing. Most of them are still unaccounted for. For all the good news reflected in official data showing homicides dropped in recent years, the number of people going missing has just kept increasing. The Jalisco New Generation cartel is deeply and violently active in the region. Last month, the Trump administration declared it as a foreign terrorist organization.
The horrific find at Teuchitlán represents the latest and most savage evolution of these forced disappearances. Anna Karolina Chimiak from the Centre of Justice for Peace and Development noted, "Incinerating bodies is a 'known practice' in Jalisco." It was at this site that activists first found human remains. They further discovered over 1,000 items of clothing which witnesses claim were used to forcibly recruit young people. Young persons were reportedly abducted and subjected to conditions of extreme deprivation to train and sexually assault them to desensitize them.
Alejandra Guillén shared her sadness for the mean-spirited motivations behind such practices. She said, “That training and that abuse serves to dehumanize them, breaking them down, taking their spirit, their identity from them. Indira Navarro expressed distress upon witnessing the remnants of lost dreams at the site: “Your skin crawls seeing everything thrown on the ground, seeing the suitcases, the dreams of these young people.”
That such a revelation should come along should be the start of a thorough investigation, a sharp break from past high-profile incidents during former administration. Claudia Sheinbaum vowed accountability, asserting, "There will not be impunity. We will never hide anything." Yet others deny any link to the Jalisco cartel, calling the evidence a smear or fabrication.
The shocking finding highlights the tragic reality that families of the missing continue to endure. María Guadalupe Aguilar reflected on their plight: “With ashes, the hope of identifying them is lost.” Despite skepticism from some quarters about the authenticity of the site’s findings, Warrior Searchers of Jalisco asserted its legitimacy: “It is not a setup, it is not an invention.”