BBC visits the ‘extermination’ site of the Mexican poster

The doors of the Izaguirre ranch are very similar to any other that can be found in the state of Jalisco. Two joke horses in the front maybe a wink to the surrounding fields that walk the cattle and sugar cane.

However, what is behind the black iron doors is supposedly evidence of the worst violence of the Mexico drug poster of recent times.

After a warning about the possible location of a mass tomb, an activist group of relatives of some of the thousands of missing people in Mexico went to the ranch, hoping to find some sign of their disappeared loved ones.

What they found was much worse: 200 pairs of shoes, hundreds of clothing, dozens of suitcases and backpacks, discarded after their own own were arranged.

Even more chilling, several ovens and fragments of human bones were found in the ranch.

The site was used, the activists affirm, by the Jalisco poster of the New Generation (CJNG) for the forced recruitment and training of their standing soldiers, and for torturing their victims and creating their bodies.

“There were children’s toys,” says Luz Toscano, a member of the Guerrtos de Jalisco seekers collective.

“People were desperate,” he recalls.

“They would see the shoes and said: ‘Those seem that my missing relative was carrying when they disappeared.'”

Toscano believes that the authorities must now go through all personal effects per piece and make them available to families for a closer inspection.

For many, however, the worst part of the horrible discovery is that the Local Police raided the ranch, near the town of Teuchitlán, as recently as last September.

While at the time they made 10 arrests and released two hostages, they did not find or reveal any evidence of the apparent magnitude of the violence taken there.

While the complete image has still presented what action, if any, it was taken by the municipal and state authorities after last year’s operation, the criticisms and families of the victims openly accuse them of complicity with the posters in Jalisco.

The state governor Pablo Lemus responded in a video message.

His administration was fully cooperating with the federal authorities, he said, and insisted that “nobody in Jalisco is washing their hands” of the case.

For Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, the events in Jalisco threaten to eclipse a strong start for her presidency.

Given the serious doubts about the actions of the Local Police and the State Attorney General’s Office, she ordered federal investigators to take over the case.

He urged people not to reach conclusions while the investigation is ongoing.

“It is important to do the investigation before reaching conclusions,” he said at his morning press conference earlier this week.

“What did they find on the site? First of all, we must listen to the state attorney general’s office, which is the responsible agency, and will let the entire country know what they have found.”

However, if most Mexicans will believe the official version of events is another question.

The place is now spent with police officers, federal investigators and forensic equipment in dust monkeys.

However, whatever they conclude, the media in Mexico are calling a “extermination” site.

Meanwhile, more victims’ relatives search teams have come to the state capital, Guadalajara, before a protest march this weekend to urge the authorities to do more to find the missing persons in Mexico.

Rosario Magaña was among them. She is the mother of Carlos Amador Magaña, who disappeared in June 2017. She was only 19 years old.

“I still feel desperate, since eight years have passed and I am still in the same situation,” he said, talking about his endless search for his son who was kidnapped along with his best friend.

“It is a very, very slow process when it comes to the office of the State Attorney General and the investigation.”

“I still have faith and hope of finding it,” he emphasized. “But I am in a situation that does not progress, and is discouraging.”

While leaving a religious service for unknown victims in the ranch in Teuchitlán, Rosario said that accusations of errors, supervision, collusion and negligence in the case only underlined the mothers of struggle uphill as she have faced for years by obtaining answers to the most basic questions about the centers of their children.

“There are so many massive tombs in Jalisco, so many Safe houses, the authorities know the modus operandi of the CJNG. So what is the government doing?” She asks rhetorically.