Discovery of secret crematoriums at a ranch in Mexico stirs fears of a cover-up

(CNN) — Advocates in Mexico are calling for an immediate and independent investigation after the discovery of what they’re describing as an “extermination camp” in Jalisco that cartels allegedly used to kill missing persons.

Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, a group dedicated to finding disappeared people, told CNN they discovered the site last week at a ranch believed to have been a criminal group’s center of operations, where they presumably took the disappeared to be recruited and trained against their will.

There, the organization found at least three crematoriums with incinerated skeletal remains hidden under a layer of earth and a brick slab. The group said they also found dozens of personal items such as clothing, hundreds of pairs of shoes, backpacks, IDs and lists of names and nicknames.

Indira Navarro, a representative of Warrior Searchers, told CNN that the existence of these types of “forced recruitment and extermination centers” was “an open secret” but that they had never seen one until March 5, when the group she leads managed to enter the ranch located near Teuchitlán.

They said they learned of the existence and location of this site through an anonymous tip.

The Jalisco Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that the ranch was originally discovered in September 2024 during an operation carried out by the National Guard, in which 10 people were arrested, two kidnapped people were released, and one person was found dead.

In their initial search of the ranch in September, authorities said they discovered weapons, vests, bullets and “two batches of thermally exposed skeletal remains.”

But at the time, they failed to detect the other remains that were found last week because cartels had hidden them in a different underground space beneath a brick slab, “a method previously unused by the criminal group,” according to the state’s attorney general’s office.

Suspicions of a cover-up

A collective of human rights organizations and relatives of the disappeared suggested that local authorities may have covered up the existence of the “extermination camp.”

“It is impossible to accept that this mega-extermination camp (Teuchitlán) operated without the complicity of authorities or security forces,” they said in a statement, which urged the federal government to take over the investigation.

When reached for comment by CNN, a spokesperson for the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office said that the agency “does not issue opinions on statements made by actors from any sphere of society.”

In a separate statement, the office said the state prosecutor “has been reviewing what happened and how thoroughly the site was inspected at the time, in order to determine whether any field procedures were neglected by the personnel then assigned during the previous Administration.”

As recently as Tuesday, several experts from the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office were working at the site, recovering evidence.

Jalisco Attorney General Salvador González said on social media Tuesday that work is underway to identify and determine the age of the human remains found.

Mexico’s Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz Manero, reinforced the idea of a possible cover-up on Tuesday, saying that “it is not credible that a situation of this nature would not have been known to the local authorities of that municipality and the state.”

CNN has reached out to local authorities in Teuchitlán for comment.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that the federal Attorney General’s Office, in collaboration with the Jalisco government, will investigate what happened at the site and “that the responsibilities that must be determined will obviously be determined.”

So far, Mexican authorities have not referred to the Teuchitlán property — where nearly 500 belongings were found, including at least 200 pairs of shoes — as an “extermination camp”.

CNN has asked authorities about the definition of that term, which the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco used in their complaints.

Another similar discovery

On Wednesday, the group Love for the Disappeared said another alleged training and “extermination camp” had been found in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

The organization said on Facebook that “hundreds of personal belongings, as well as charred skeletal remains of an undetermined number of people,” were discovered there, though CNN cannot independently confirm if the skeletal remains are human.

CNN is attempting to contact the organization for more information.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection told CNN that it is aware of the discovery and is conducting relevant investigations.

CNN has requested more information from local police and the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office.

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