Mexico Mass Grave Could Shed Light on Missing Relatives

The families of many Mexicans who have been missing for years are looking for answers after the discovery of piles of clothes, shoes and skeletal remains at a ranch in western Mexico that might have been a base to burn bodies and bury the remains.

Civilian activists searching for missing loved ones discovered the mass grave last week in Teuchitlan, Jalisco state, along with ovens possibly used to cremate bodies.

"This has given hope to many people looking for their relatives so they can find their loved ones," said Raul Servin, a member of a group of people searching for lost family members, who has been trying to find his son for seven years.

Servin said many people from across Mexico contacted his group to say they identified clothes, shoes, backpacks or other objects their relatives were wearing on the days they disappeared.

The office of Mexico Attorney General Alejandro Gertz did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on the case, a day after top prosecutor Alejandro Gertz pledged a full investigation and said it would have been impossible for Jalisco's state authorities to not have been aware of what was happening.

The state prosecutor's office in Jalisco told Reuters it would have results in two weeks on tests being conducted on hundreds of items of clothing, bullet casings of various calibers and skeleton fragments found in Teuchitlan.

The state prosecutor's office said it had set up a public platform with nearly 600 items recovered at the scene, such as suitcases, backpacks and pieces of clothing, so people could identify belongings online.

Located by the Pacific coast, Jalisco is home to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a criminal organization that authorities have accused of forcibly recruiting young people and being behind the state's high number of missing persons reports.

Virginia Garay, whose son has been missing since 2018, said her group in neighboring Nayarit was preparing for the arrival of representatives of other groups from across Mexico, hoping to identify lost family members.

"We are looking for the resources so we can go and personally review the clothing and all the evidence at the site," Garay said.

Edith Olivares, head of Amnesty International's Mexico branch, urged the Mexican government to clarify the facts and provide the necessary resources to do so, as well as give dignified treatment to people who recognized relatives' clothing.

"The Mexican state has been the great absentee in the problem of forced disappearance," Olivares said. She added that community groups, made up mostly of women, had helped locate hundreds of bodies and people were turning to them rather than the government.

There are more than 124,000 missing people in Mexico, according to government data.