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This message comes from Moderna. If you're 65 or older, the CDC recommends getting a second dose of this season's COVID-19 vaccine. Get an updated vaccine so you don't let down the ones who matter most. Ask your doctor about getting a second dose. Today on State of the World, a mother's anguish after a grisly discovery in Mexico. You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening.
It's Thursday, April 17th. I'm Christine Arismath. Mexico's been in shock for the past few weeks over the discovery of a large ranch that was apparently used by drug cartels for training recruits. Family members of the thousands of people missing in Mexico discovered it and pressed authorities into action. These families say they found bones and makeshift cremation ovens.
The government says that so far, there are no indications that the ranch was used as a killing field. NPR's Eder Peralta reports from Jalisco, Mexico, and a warning that this report contains graphic descriptions of mutilations. At the Izaguirre Ranch these days, all you see is crews of forensic scientists filing in and out of the white tents the government has built along the edges of the vast sugarcane fields.
An 82-year-old farmer tells me this was no man's land just a few weeks ago. He says members of the cartels would zoom past these fields. And we would just crouch down, not say anything, because they could easily kill you. We're not using his name because he fears retribution. And then, at night, we would hear gunfire.
None of this should come as a surprise. The Jalisco New Generation cartel has been running training camps around here since at least 2017, when authorities dismantled four of them. This September, they raided the Rancho Izaguirre. They arrested 10 people, freed two, and found one person dead. And a few weeks later, at another nearby ranch, they freed 36 young men abducted by the cartels. The findings didn't get much attention until March.
when a collective of grieving parents who called themselves Searching Warriors got into Rancho Izaguirre. Unfortunately, we are in a...
In a country with 100,000 missing people, the images were haunting. They showed piles of shoes, shirts, and backpacks that the parents assumed were once worn by the young people who were lured into joining the cartels. The
The collective said they also found pounds of bones and makeshift ovens where they assume bodies were cremated. The governor of the state of Jalisco said that the bones at the ranch were not human. But here in Mexico, every time news like this bubbles up, it fills the parents of the missing with both hope and dread. Us mothers are never wrong.
Feve González says when she first saw images of the ranch, she knew in her heart at least one of her two missing sons was there. Us mothers have a sixth sense.
González remembers the day her older son, Carlos, went missing in 2019. He was working as an account executive at a bank, but one day he was offered a job interview for a gig that paid much more. He told her, our life is going to change this year. She gave him a nicer shirt. He gave her a kiss on the cheek. And I always wiped my face because his kisses were always wet.
And oh, how I miss those kisses now. It was the last time she saw him. Neighbors told her he was picked up by members of the cartel, so she went to the police, she went to the morgue, where they handed her a book full of pictures. They were heads, they were torsos and legs. I looked through pictures for 20 days and
One day, an official there took pity. She told her, you need to open a file with the prosecutor's office. It's when she told me, Carlos is disappeared. I told her, he's not disappeared. He just got picked up.
She gave authorities DNA samples, she gave them pictures and descriptions, and they told her, we'll call you when we find him. I wouldn't get up, I didn't bathe, I wouldn't eat. My hair was all tangled. When I brushed my teeth, my gums bled.
All she did was wait for that call. She was trapped in a fog of depression for more than a year. Eventually, she joined a collective of mothers traveling through the state trying to find their children. At one site, they found bags full of human remains. When the bags reached the lab, they were full of feet or heads. They were not human.
It wasn't a bag with a body. It was a bag full of torsos or a bag full of heads. She said,
She learned how cartels segmented bodies. She learned how investigators pieced them together like a puzzle. And she was always looking for Carlos, for his gray boots, for the nice shirt she gave him. And in the middle of that search, in March of 2023, her younger son Jonathan was abducted right after he picked up his kids from school. His three kids, four, six, and ten, were in the car when he was taken. They stole my car.
"They took my dad," the kids said. "The men with rifles took my dad."
And almost six years after her first son went missing, she stumbled upon her first clue. In pictures from the ranch, she spotted her older son's backpack. She thought, like her son, young men were being lured to the ranch with the promise of a job. Authorities believe the men were trained and then sent off to fight. The parents believe that at least some of them were killed and buried right at the ranch. I was scared. I was scared. I was scared.
I just have this feeling that one of my kids is there. The next day, I go to the main cathedral in Guadalajara. The Archbishop of the city, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, has been outspoken on the disappeared. I ask him what the parish near the ranch knew and whether the priests notified police. He doesn't want to get into specifics, he says. People realize, people know.
But people know. They know the disappeared. They even know who took them. But very often, what prevails is fear.
The reality, he says, is that organized crime runs this part of Mexico. Even the church, he says, would up until recently have to ask the cartel boss permission to run festivities. They never denied permission, but they would say, we'll split the profits 50-50.
That same afternoon, right next door, about a hundred students gather to protest in front of the governor's palace. Out with the narco state, they shout. Andrea Aguirre, a law student, is wearing a list of missing young people. It unfurls behind her like a macabre wedding veil. How much longer, she asks, do we have to live in fear? This damn government is a nightmare.
The protesters throw fake blood against the walls of the palace. The governor isn't there, the police just watch. And at the edge of the crowd, two mothers hold on to pictures of their missing children. Eder Peralta, NPR News, in Jalisco State, Mexico.
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