Irma González recognized the gray backpack in the photo. It was the same one her son had used for high school and the one he had taken with him for his first job three years ago, just before he vanished.
When Ms. González, 43, saw the images on television of bone fragments and scattered personal belongings uncovered on a ranch in western Mexico, her heart sank. Had her son, Jossel Sánchez, met his fate there? Were his remains there somewhere? Or had a criminal group brought him to that place only to take him elsewhere?
Standing about 300 feet away from the entrance of the Izaguirre ranch on Wednesday, surrounded by sugar cane fields and barren hills, she was desperate for answers.
“I just want to find my son, dead or alive,” she said while sobbing and pleading with local police officers who had cordoned off the site to let her inside.
Ms. González echoed the sorrow felt by countless other Mexicans searching for missing loved ones, which has been shattered by a mixture of hope and despair. This emotional turmoil followed the discovery by search volunteers two weeks ago of a ranch outside La Estanzuela, a small, dusty Mexican village near Guadalajara in Jalisco state.
Inside the abandoned site, members of the search group, called Searching Warriors of Jalisco, found traces of unimaginable violence: cremation ovens, burned human remains and bone shards. Discarded personal items, and hundreds of shoes.
The discovery has sent shock waves through the nation, becoming the latest symbol of Mexico’s relentless violence and its crisis of disappearances.
More than 120,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since the country started keeping track in 1962, according to official data. From 2018 to January 2023, the government agency that coordinates efforts to locate missing persons in Mexico recorded 2,710 clandestine graves containing human remains across the country.
So far local authorities do not have many answers about the so-called “extermination camp” here in Jalisco, as media outlets and the search group have come to call it. Officials have said the camp may have been operated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — one of the most violent criminal organizations in the country — to train recruits, torture their victims and dispose of bodies. But they have yet to say how many people died on the site, and none of the remains have been identified.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz of Mexico criticized the initial investigation carried out by local authorities and said it had been riddled with irregularities. Local officials failed to secure the site after it was first located six months ago by National Guard members, and it was “abandoned” soon after, Mr. Gertz said.
Those investigators did not properly document or register evidence that they found on the site, nor did they take fingerprints found in the place, he said. The country’s attorney general’s office has since taken over the investigation at the request of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
New York Times journalists went inside the football field-sized camp enclosed by cement walls on Thursday.
All the evidence uncovered by the search group was gone — collected by authorities and dozens of investigators, law enforcement officers and forensic experts. Small yellow flags punctuated the desolate terrain, each one marking a spot where investigators had uncovered a piece of evidence.
Inside a large warehouse with a tin roof, where the search group discovered piles of clothes and shoes, the space now stood eerily empty. Three chickens wandered through the silence. On the floor, a single candle flickered.
Trash, empty beer cans and shards of broken glass littered the ground. Partially buried car tires and barbed wire marked the area where authorities believe the cartel may have trained its recruits.
Small holes, no larger than a trash bin, dotted the earth like a saltshaker, left by forensic anthropologists who excavated the soil in search of human remains or other evidence.
Several larger dig sites were cordoned off by yellow police tape.
The day prior, Ms. González had eventually been allowed in, only to discover all the evidence had been relocated. She left there with a mix of relief and disappointment. “As a mother I am relieved, but I want to end this suffering,” she said.
Over three years ago, Ms. González’s son Jossel disappeared after being recruited for a cellphone store job in Puebla, in central Mexico, through a Facebook ad. At 18 and nearing graduation, he dropped out to support his family when Ms. González fell ill with pneumonia that left her unable to work.
Soon after news of the extermination camp emerged two weeks ago, authorities published a catalog with photographs of more than 1,500 items found inside the ranch. Ms. González said she had recognized Jossel’s backpack.
She gathered enough money to buy a plane ticket to Jalisco to see for herself if the backpack truly belonged to her son. Perhaps, in that small confirmation, she could find some clarity, and maybe even some peace.
Numerous families from across Mexico have scoured the photos, desperately searching for signs of their missing relatives. Some have recognized items and rushed to Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital, hoping to find answers.
While the discovery of the ranch shocked the nation, news of the emergence of new mass graves and buried victims has become a common occurrence in Jalisco state, which has the highest number of disappearances in Mexico.
Only two days before the Izaguirre ranch was found, members of the Searching Warriors of Jalisco group got a tip about a mass grave on a residential property in Guadalajara. There, they uncovered 13 bags containing human remains buried in the backyard, according to Raúl Servín, one of the leaders of the search group.
The residents were unaware of the grave’s existence, he said.
Seven years ago, Mr. Servín was forced to become an anthropologist of sorts when his 20-year-old son, Raúl, vanished without a trace. It was a woman from a different search organization who taught him the skills he would need: how to choose the right shovel for digging and to recognize the specific hollow sound the earth makes when stepped on — a telltale sign that something, or someone, might be buried beneath.
He now splits his days working as a waiter and responding to hundreds of calls with tips of possible locations of mass graves across Guadalajara. He goes, shovel in hand, inspects the terrain and digs, looking for missing victims. In seven years, he said, he has found hundreds of bodies.
He does it to try to give the families some peace.
“A pair of shoes does not give you a body to bury and go visit in a cemetery, or any clarity of what happened to my boy,” said Mr. Servín, 53.
His son is among the more than 15,000 people who have gone missing in the state of Jalisco. Many of these cases are believed to be linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
As the criminal group has expanded its territory across the state in recent years, the number of homicides and disappearances in Jalisco have rocketed.
Ulises Ruiz, a local photographer who was with the search group when they discovered the ranch site earlier this month, likened the widespread disappearances in Jalisco to a pandemic, noting the phenomenon has grown exponentially, affecting more and more people.
“Like it happened with Covid, we thought it was happening somewhere else, in other states or cities,” he said. “But suddenly, everyone around you has a loved one or knows someone who has vanished.”
James Wagner contributed reporting.