At the horror ranch in Mexico: ‘When I saw what happened, I couldn’t speak. I started to cry’

The traffic is hellish and the sun beats down on the highway. The noise of the truck exhausts, their smoke, eliminates any hope of life beyond the next 100 meters. Guadalajara isn’t even visible on the horizon. Then the phone rings. “Yeah, okay?” “Hey...” “Who is it?” “Oh, it’s the person you spoke to earlier, from over there...” Ah, the person, the man who has no name, no face, and no joy. “Look, I want to ask you not to include anything about...” the man continues and requests the omission of several details from the story he told earlier, in Teuchitlán, at his home. For his safety, that of his children, his wife, his nephews.

Then he hangs up. In the notebook, there are countless details about his case, the disappearance of his son in October 2017, there in Teuchitlán, an hour and a half from Guadalajara, in central Mexico. Countless phrases jotted down, just as the man speaks: “My son was very much in love, very much in love,” for example, or, “in that time, I lost my fear of myself,” or, also, “when I saw what happened at the ranch here, I came home and told my wife, but I couldn’t finish speaking because I started to cry.” The “ranch here,” the new focus of horror in a country with tragedies like this every week.

No one knows how many people died at the Izaguirre Ranch, a rectangle of dry land measuring just over 5,000 square meters, forgotten by the world, 10 minutes from the man’s house in the municipal capital of Teuchitlán, a town of farmers and ranchers. A magical town, too: every year, hundreds of people come to celebrate the spring equinox in its curious circular pyramids. It’s unclear if anyone will come this year, because the news is horrifying, and no one likes to celebrate anything alongside the possibility of evil. Because so much evil is assumed at the Izaguirre Ranch, a horror of which only remnants and unknowns remain.

Remains of bones, remains of clothing, remains of toys. And remnants, too, of neglect. Last week, a group of relatives of missing persons arrived at the ranch, alerted by a young man’s call, who told them he had been held captive there, a hostage of a criminal organization. He also told them that the group, supposedly the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful in the country, had killed many people at the ranch. The relatives, almost all women, hired a bus and, escorted by the National Guard, arrived at the site. It was March 5, Ash Wednesday. The gate was open. They entered. Experts in what undisturbed earth should look like, it wasn’t difficult for them to find the first signs that something was wrong.

There were hundreds of small, seemingly burned bone fragments. They emerged from the earth with every shovelful. That’s what Lorena Cabrera, part of the group of relatives who call themselves Warrior Searchers, recalled last Friday. When she began to see those tiny bones emerging from the earth, she felt sad. “How are they going to get DNA from there, they’re so small?” she thought, a reflection that hasn’t left her mind. That day, while some of them worked with their rods, digging through the earth, looking for more bones, the rest investigated the buildings on the ranch. There are several, most of them near the entrance. In one, they found huge quantities of clothing, sneakers, pants, and backpacks. “Even toys!” says Cabrera, 57. “I thought, ‘How is it possible? Did they bring children here?’”

The case has caused a stir rarely witnessed in recent times in Mexico, for several reasons. The horror of the situation itself, the discovery of so many pieces of bone, found in holes in the ground, spaces reminiscent of those used to cook meat in towns across the country; the possibilities suggested by such a discovery — that people were burned there, that they were dismantled. Then there is the clothing, the quantity, the photos of hundreds of sneakers, which many have compared to Nazi concentration camps. Then there is the intuition of the searchers, according to whom the space also served as a training center for recruits, forced or otherwise.

And last but not least, the negligence of the authorities, who were there last September, after the arrest of 10 people and the rescue of two, and who found nothing of this. This combination of factors has brought the issue to the forefront of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s press conferences this week. She has called the incident “terrible” and criticized the local prosecutor’s office, which supposedly had the property in its custody since September. This Sunday, a collective of relatives of missing persons held dozens of demonstrations across the country, demanding justice.

There are numbers and nuances that give context to the matter and allow us to better understand the anger — or more than anger, the grief. For example, the number of missing people in the state of Jalisco, where the ranch is located — more than 15,000 — or the number reported throughout Mexico — over 115,000 — or the certainty that the Teuchitlán case is only the latest of many, since similar training centers — and/or extermination centers — have been found in the same region, home to the popular tourist town of Tequila. Testimonies from people who supposedly escaped from Teuchitlán speak of a hell on earth and use terms like abuse and slavery, and describe fights to the death among recruits, which ended with those killed on pyres.

The gentleman and the priest

The man, who has no name or face, laughs bitterly, nothing remarkable, barely a grimace. All at the mention of the priest’s words, transferred from the local parish to his house. Teuchitlán is a quiet town, the priest says. No one noticed what happened at the ranch, he adds, quoting Plautus, saying that man is a wolf to man. There’s no need to tell the man this, he knows it well. Tonight he plans to go to the website set up by the local prosecutor’s office, with the list of items recovered from the ranch, which now number more than 1,000. His son was wearing a blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball shirt, jeans, and black Vans sneakers. The search begins.

Meanwhile the priest, Jaime Navel, 50, expresses his bewilderment, an attitude that reflects that of the town, which has around 9,000 inhabitants, a number that fluctuates in the heat of the migrant population. “I would say each family has two or three, especially in California,” he explains. “We learned that in September, the National Guard had discovered a training center there. Of course, people didn’t know about it,” he argues, “because it’s outside the populated area, in a sugarcane plantation area. For much of the year, you can’t even see the ranch; the sugarcane covers it.”

It’s true that the ranch is isolated, but relatively isolated, an area of pastures, large properties. Still, Navel’s neighbors didn’t hear anything either. No screams, no gunshots — the facade of the main building is riddled with bullet holes — no trucks coming and going… Tarquín Martín Del Campo, an 87-year-old rancher who fattens cows on a farm 1,000 meters away, says: “It was a novelty here. We’ve never had any problems, and the municipal police come by all the time, every week.”

It’s harvest season, and the absence of sugarcane clears the horizon. In the background, the fence of the ranch of horrors can be seen, today filled with police and forensic experts. Herons drink from the puddles of the new crops. The sugarcane harvest never stops. The photos of the sneakers encapsulate the fear and terror and connect with the tragedy of a country at war, which accounts for more than 30,000 murders each year. The photos provide a subterranean connection to the tragedies of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas, on the other side of the country, 13 and 14 years ago. Back then, Los Zetas kidnapped bus passengers. Their suitcases arrived alone at the terminal, in half-empty vehicles. Photos of suitcases alone, of shoes with no owners.

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