Police searching for clandestine crematorium in Mexico say bones found around charred pit are ‘of animal origin’

Tracked by search dogs and police, María de Jesús Soria Aguayo and more than a dozen volunteers walked cautiously through fields of weeds and dry earth, their eyes fixed on the ground Wednesday.

On the outskirts of Mexico City, the group was searching for human remains and other evidence after volunteer searchers said the site could be the location of a clandestine crematorium.

The search came after Ceci Flores, leader of a group searching for the bodies of missing Mexicans, announced on social media Tuesday evening. that his team had found bonesclandestine burial pits and ID cards around a charred grave on the southern outskirts of the city.

However, Ulises Lara, Mexico City’s attorney general, disputed those claims Wednesday evening, saying authorities had found 14 bones and that all were “of animal origin.”

“We can confirm that this is not a crematorium, nor a clandestine grave,” he said.

Flores’ social media announcement a day earlier drew attention because it was the first time in recent memory that someone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the Mexican capital.

If such a site were discovered, it could deal a major blow to Mexico’s ruling Morena party ahead of June 2 elections. Morena says the violence in Mexico did not spill over into Mexico City when she controlled the local government.

The searches carried out on Wednesday highlighted the difficulty many Mexican families face when searching for the remains of the 110,000 people. missing people amid cartel violence.

The volunteers, like Soria Aguayo, are mostly mothers of the missing. They formed their own independent groups to conduct research in violence-torn areas of Mexico.

“Madres buscadoras” – “mothers in search” – generally do not attempt to condemn anyone for the disappearance of their loved ones. They say they just want find their remains. Many families say that not having accurate knowledge of a loved one’s fate is worse than knowing that a loved one has died.

“I started my own search alone, tracking with my own hands and searching the countryside alone,” said Soria Aguayo, 54, whose son’s remains were found in Veracruz state in 2022. “My promise to these women is to keep looking until we can’t anymore… because there are still a lot (of bodies) that we haven’t found.”

THE Mexican government has spent little on searching for the missing, so volunteers lead their own hunts for clandestine graves where cartels hide their victims.

If volunteers find something, most authorities will simply send a team of police and forensic scientists to recover the remains, which in most cases are never identified. The government also failed to adequately fund or implement a genetic database to help identify the remains.

Searches are having more and more deadly consequences. At least seven of the activists searching for some of the missing people in Mexico killed since 2021.

Volunteer groups have been angered by a government campaign to “find” missing people by checking their last known address, to see if they returned home without informing authorities. Activists say it is simply an attempt to reduce the politically embarrassing figures for the missing.

Discussing some of the evidence found earlier at the site, Lara, Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, said Wednesday morning that police went to the addresses listed on the recovered ID cards and “observed that the two people to whom these cards belonged were alive.” and in good health.”

Lara said one of them, a woman, told police that her ID card and cell phone had been stolen about a year ago, when thieves snatched them from her while she was stuck in traffic. While this rules out the possibility that the woman’s body was dumped there, it suggests that criminals used the site to dispose of evidence. In Mexico City’s wooded and rural areas, it is not uncommon for criminals to dump the bodies of kidnapping victims.

After hours of searching the fields of the rural suburbs of the Mexican capital, volunteers found only frustration.

While some members of the group doubted whether any bodies would be found, Flores said they planned to continue their search, adding that they had already spent two days searching the area following an anonymous tip. Volunteers like Flores often conduct investigations based on tips from former criminals.

“If they don’t look, they’ll never find anything,” Flores said.