Secret burial pits, bones and kids' notebooks found in Mexico City

Volunteer searchers said they person recovered a clandestine crematorium connected nan separator of Mexico City, nan latest grim find successful a federation wherever much than 100,000 group are listed arsenic officially missing.

It's nan first clip successful caller representation that anyone claimed to person recovered specified a assemblage disposal tract successful nan capital. Collectives searching for missing persons say that supplier cartels and different organized crime gangs often usage drums filled pinch diesel aliases caustic substances to pain aliases dissolve bodies to time off nary trace — but up to now, location has been small grounds of that successful Mexico City.

Ceci Flores, a leader of 1 of nan groups of alleged "searching mothers" from bluish Mexico, announced connected societal media precocious Tuesday her squad had recovered bones astir a charred pit connected nan outskirts of nan city.

Flores said nan squad had recovered bones, clandestine funeral pits, ID cards and children's notebooks astatine nan tract successful a agrarian area of nan city's southbound side.

"I americium not looking for justice, conscionable for a mother to cognize wherever to tuck her boy successful for nan past time," she wrote. "I want to cry, this state is not right."

Police guidelines by arsenic members of nan National Search Commission usage rakes to hunt an area wherever volunteers said they recovered a clandestine crematorium successful Tlahuac, connected nan separator of Mexico City, Wednesday, May 1, 2024.  Ginnette Riquelme / AP

Mexico City prosecutors issued a connection saying they were investigating nan find to find nan quality of nan remains found, and whether they were human. The prosecutors agency said it was besides reviewing information camera footage and looking for imaginable witnesses.

The discovery, if confirmed, would beryllium a governmental embarrassment for nan ruling party, which has agelong governed Mexico City and claims nan superior has been spared overmuch of nan drug cartel violence that afflicts different parts of nan country.

That is mostly owed to nan city's dense population, notoriously snarled traffic, extended information camera web and ample constabulary force, which presumably make it difficult for criminals to enactment successful nan aforesaid measurement they do successful provincial areas.

But while nan metropolis is location to 9 cardinal residents and nan greater metropolitan area holds astir 20 million, ample parts of nan southbound broadside are still a operation of farms, woods and mountains. In those areas, it is not unheard of for criminals to dump nan bodies of kidnapping victims, but they seldom pain aliases hide them.

Volunteer searchers for illustration Flores often behaviour their ain investigations, sometimes relying connected tips from erstwhile criminals, because nan authorities has been incapable to help. The searchers person been angered by a authorities run to "find" missing group by checking their past known address, to spot if they person returned location without advising authorities.

Activists declare that is conscionable an effort to trim nan politically embarrassing figures connected nan missing.              

The searchers, mostly nan mothers of nan disappeared, usually aren't trying to convict anyone for their relatives' abductions. They opportunity they conscionable want to find their remains.

The Mexican authorities has spent small connected looking for nan missing. Volunteers must guidelines successful for nonexistent charismatic hunt teams successful nan hunt for clandestine graves wherever cartels hide their victims. The authorities hasn't adequately funded aliases implemented a familial database to thief place nan remains found.

Victims' relatives trust connected anonymous tips, sometimes from erstwhile cartel gunmen, to find suspected body-dumping sites. They plunge agelong alloy rods into nan world to observe nan scent of death.

If they find something, nan astir authorities will do is nonstop a constabulary and forensics squad to retrieve nan remains, which successful astir cases are ne'er identified. But specified systematic searches person been uncommon successful Mexico City.

At slightest 7 of nan activists searching for immoderate of Mexico's much than 100,000 missing group person been killed since 2021.

In March, a group of relatives searching for missing loved ones said they discovered astir 2 twelve bags containing quality remains successful a clandestine cemetery astatine a ranch successful El Salto successful nan occidental authorities of Jalisco. In nan aforesaid region successful February 2023, 31 bodies were exhumed by authorities from 2 clandestine graves.

In 2018, a female named Maria told CBS News she joined a group of volunteers to look for nan remains of her son, who she saw grabbed disconnected nan thoroughfare and thrown into a achromatic van. 

"They had taken him. He was successful a motortruck a thoroughfare away," she said. "Like I person my son, others person their children, their siblings, their spouses, their parents. There's each benignant of person. That's why we're present — to search."

In:
• Drug Cartels
• Mexico
• Cartel