An abandoned ranch in western Mexico that groups searching for missing relatives had claimed was an “extermination camp” — because of discarded personal items and burned remains found there — was a training hub for a major cartel, Mexico’s attorney general announced on Tuesday. But, he said “there is not a single piece of evidence to prove” that the ranch was the site of human cremations.
At a news conference presenting his office’s findings so far in the high-profile case, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said that the Izaguirre ranch in Teuchitlán, a village near Guadalajara in Jalisco state, was “totally proven” to have been used as a recruitment, training and operations center by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most violent criminal organizations in the country. He said that conclusion was based on testimonials and documents.
But in a departure from previous comments, Mr. Gertz insisted that there was no proof of cremations at the ranch.
Mr. Gertz said a container of very small bone fragments was found by the authorities who originally discovered the ranch in September. He said that studies conducted by a Mexico City university on evidence, dirt and other materials did not find heat levels over 200 degrees Celsius. Cremations, he said, require levels in excess of 800 degrees.
Earlier this month, Mr. Gertz said that investigators had not found evidence of crematories at the ranch, but that some human remains found there had “traces of some type of cremation.” And Mexico’s security minister, Omar García Harfuch, said last month that, based on a detained person’s testimony, the cartel went as far as killing those who resisted training or tried to escape.
On Tuesday, Mr. Gertz said that, beyond the one body found by the authorities in September, when the National Guard exchanged fire with people at the ranch, investigators had not found more bodies or bones.
The ditches and holes in the ground — which a search group had believed to be cremation ovens — were bonfires, Mr. Gertz said.
Héctor Flores, a leader of a search group in Jalisco state, said in a phone interview that search groups still believed that the ranch had been an extermination site and that people had been cremated there given what they found last month. He said that officials were using technical language in an effort to change the narrative.
“The government can call it whatever it wants, but I think Mexican society is mature enough and aware of this whole Izaguirre topic to not believe the lies of the federal government,” he said.
Mr. Gertz said that authorities had no idea how many people may have been recruited or disappeared at the ranch. He said the forensic team was still studying the bone fragments to identify them, a task that has been complicated by their small size.
Multiple times on Tuesday, Mr. Gertz reminded the public that the investigation was ongoing and that his office has only had control of the case since late March, when President Claudia Sheinbaum asked him to take over.
After a group of volunteers searching for their missing relatives received a tip in early March about a possible mass grave hidden in western Mexico, photos of heaps of shoes and clothes shocked a country already scarred by many episodes of brutal violence and clandestine graves.
More than 120,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since the country began keeping track in 1962, according to official data. More than 15,000 have gone missing in the state of Jalisco, with many of the cases believed to be linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Last month, Mr. Gertz criticized the 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 in September, and it was abandoned until the search group came along last month.
On Tuesday, Mr. Gertz said that a state human rights commission in Jalisco told local authorities in 2021 of illicit activities at the ranch “but they did nothing.” Among the 14 people currently detained in connection with the case, Mr. Gertz said there are three local police officers, including a police chief, as well as a person whom the authorities have identified as a cartel leader who oversaw the training center.
“We’re going to go after those who were covering up or participating in” the cartel’s operations at the ranch, Mr. Gertz said, noting that this included public officials. He also said that his office was investigating other possible “narco-ranches” in the area.
As far as the bags of clothes that were found at the ranch — but that have not been studied by local authorities — Mr. Gertz said that he did not know whom they belonged to. But he said that federal investigators planned to work with search groups to help identify the items and then perhaps link them to their owners through forensic tests.
