Volunteer searchers in Mexico City claim to have discovered a clandestine crematorium on the outskirts of Mexico City. This site is believed to be used for disposing of bodies. The Mexican government has provided little funding for finding missing persons, leading volunteers to take on the task themselves. This discovery follows a similar practice used by drug cartels in northern Mexico, where bodies are often burned or dissolved in drums filled with diesel or caustic substances.
The leader of one group of “searching mothers” from northern Mexico, Ceci Flores, announced the discovery on social media. Bones, clandestine burial pits, and ID cards were found at the site in a rural area of the city’s south side. Mexico City prosecutors are investigating the find to determine the nature of the remains and whether they are human. This potential discovery would be a political embarrassment for the ruling party, as Mexico City has largely been spared from the drug cartel violence seen in other parts of the country.
While Mexico City is densely populated with extensive security measures in place, large parts of the south side consist of farms, woods, and mountains. Criminals often dump bodies in these areas, but burning or burying them is less common. Volunteer searchers, mainly made up of relatives of the missing, conduct their own investigations due to the government’s lack of assistance. The government’s search efforts have been criticized for focusing on checking the last known address of missing persons, potentially leading to inaccurate figures on missing people.
The Mexican government has allocated little funding for finding missing persons, leaving volunteers to search for clandestine graves where victims are hidden by cartels. Despite the use of long steel rods to detect the scent of death, remains found are often not identified. Authorities only send police and forensics teams to retrieve the remains, with little follow-up. Incidents of activists searching for missing persons being killed have been reported since 2021, highlighting the dangers faced by those involved in search efforts.
Several activists searching for Mexico’s over 100,000 missing persons have been killed since 2021, illustrating the risks associated with search efforts. The Mexican government has failed to provide adequate funding or resources for finding missing persons, leading volunteer searchers to take on the task themselves. The discovery of a clandestine crematorium on the outskirts of Mexico City adds to concerns about the treatment of victims and the lack of official search efforts in the country. Further investigations are ongoing to determine the nature of the remains found at the site, raising questions about the government’s response to the country’s missing persons crisis.
