Police found some 45 bags of human remains Tuesday in a ravine in the state of Jalisco, in western Mexico, during the search for eight young people who have been missing for ten days, local authorities announced.
"Forty-five bags containing human remains matching males and females have been removed," the state attorney's office confirmed in a statement on Thursday, as work continues to recover and identify the bodies.
According to the first investigations by the police, some of the remains found in a ravine in the town of Zapopan, on the outskirts of Guadalajara, could coincide with some of the young people who disappeared more than ten days ago. The authorities had started an operation to find two women and six men, around 30 years old and missing since May 20.
The reports on the searches for missing persons were submitted separately and on different days, but the authorities realized that they all worked in a call center that the police hypothesized could be involved in illegal activities.
The state prosecutor of the state of Jalisco stated in a statement that he went to the Mirador del Bosque cliff after a tip-off during the search for the eight missing people.
Relatives of the victims say the government is not doing enough to find them and that officials are indifferent when they report their loved ones missing.
Although it has not yet been established how the bodies arrived at this location, disappearance crimes are relatively common in Mexico. According to data from the federal government, there are more than 110,000 missing persons throughout the country, and Jalisco is the state with the highest number, with 15,000. There are also thousands of unidentified remains in morgues and cemeteries.
Many of the disappeared are victims of organized crime, and the figures show that this type of cases has increased since the launch in December 2006 of a vast and controversial military operation aimed at fighting drug trafficking. The perpetrators are rarely punished.
In 2021, some 70 bags containing the human remains belonging to eleven people were found in Tonalá, near Guadalajara.
