‘Mexican Auschwitz’ opens its doors: ‘The only truth is that they don’t care about the missing’

The ranch of horror has opened its doors. The “Mexican Auschwitz,” as it has come to be known, is a compound in the middle of harvested sugarcane fields, accessible through a black iron gate riddled with bullet holes. Inside, there is little to see: a barren field with four dusty palm trees, filthy bathrooms, and three sheds with tin roofs.

On March 5, a group of people searching for their missing relatives entered unannounced and discovered human skeletal remains, signs of cremations, hundreds of items of clothing, toiletries, and even toys. But the image that has shocked the public and evoked comparisons to Nazi atrocities is the pile of abandoned shoes that was found.

The Izaguirre ranch in Teuchitlán, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, is one of the many training camps used by organized crime to recruit young people to their cause. It is also known that these recruits are subjected to the cruelest practices to strip them of any fear of using knives and guns, even forcing them to kill one another. Many of the thousands of people who have disappeared in Mexico have fallen into the hands of cartels. And it is no longer known whether they are alive or dead.

Several groups of searchers from Jalisco, as well as from other states, visited the ranch on Thursday. Muffled cries were heard, faded by the shock, but above all, there was despair as it became clear that there was no more evidence inside. “Why did they bring us here?” asked one person. “This is a mockery,” said another. “The only truth is that they don’t care about the missing,” one individual told the press, which was also granted access to the ranch for the first time.

The Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office, at the request of the Attorney General’s Office, chartered seven buses and transported dozens of journalists, who jostled at the doors of the ranch in the stifling heat. Inside, the searchers scoured through the dirt floor with their feet and found a few socks, a blue Adidas backpack, a gold-handled razor, and some toothbrushes. “This is how they search for clues,” one of them sarcastically remarked before several microphones.

The shock from the macabre discovery on March 5 was followed by disbelief at the sloppy work of the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office. The authorities had entered the ranch last September, arrested 10 people, rescued two, and recovered a body — but little else.

The site was supposedly sealed off, yet in the months following that operation, two vehicles were stolen from the location. It was left virtually abandoned. Little to nothing is known about the survivors; no statements were taken, no fingerprints were collected, and no questions were raised about the owners of the ranch, located just a few miles from Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s wealthiest cities.

All of this has been publicly condemned by Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero. This kind of negligence is attributed to either fear of organized crime or collusion with it, and such failures of law enforcement are common across the country. The Attorney General’s Office has since taken over the case, removing all clothes, shoes, and items, which have been displayed to the public in the hopes that they will be identified by the relatives of the missing.

However, the outrage over the state’s handling of the investigation is overwhelming. So many missed opportunities. The ranch is now fully dug up, with excavations made in the ground to search for clues. In some of the holes, red flags indicate “positive” results, while in certain corners, there are mounds of ash.

The ranch has been opened to the public, but information remains scarce or nonexistent. How many young men and women passed through there, how long ago, who survived, whose bones were found, what exactly happened there, and since when? There is nothing to report while the Prosecutor’s Office conducts its investigation, but it has already been made clear that the initial team responsible for gathering evidence failed, and the searchers fear that, once again, they’ll pass the buck and the case will be closed without any results. It is assumed that the brutal training camp was controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which dominates the area, but even that remains uncertain.

On the unpaved floor of one of the sheds lie rudimentary weights made from two rusty cans filled with cement. On the wall, there are other metal objects that also seemed to be intended for physical exercise. “They want them strong,” says a woman involved in the search, referring to the forced recruitment by criminal organizations. Beside her, a young woman wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of her missing loved one finds no solace, sitting on the cobblestones and embracing her friends from the bus.

In Mexico, 124,000 people have been officially missing for several decades. The earliest cases were victims of the state itself, during what became known as the Dirty War, when the military and police took away people who opposed the regime. The missing people of today are victims of organized crime. Some voluntarily join their ranks, while others are abducted daily from neighborhoods, streets, and highways, never to be seen again. Some may be dead, but others may have endured the horrific indoctrination in these camps and turned into criminals themselves. All of them are being searched for by their mothers.

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