Around 45 bags of human remains were discovered in a ravine in western Mexico’s Jalisco state during a search for eight young people who have been missing for ten days, local authorities said on Wednesday.
• Also read: “I’m ashamed of my country”: The family of the Sagueneans shot dead in Mexico breaks the silence
• Also read: Sagueneans killed in Mexico: A suspect would have been arrested by authorities
“Forty-five bags of human remains, male and female, were recovered,” prosecutors, who continued collecting evidence Thursday, said in a statement.
The discovery was made Tuesday at the bottom of a 40-meter-high gorge in the municipality of Zapopan, on the outskirts of Guadalajara, capital of the state of Jalisco.
Authorities had launched an operation to locate two women and six men, around the age of 30, who had been missing since May 20.
The reports on the missing persons searches were separate and filed on different days, but authorities found that they all worked in one call centre.
The place where these young people worked is in the same area where the human remains were found.
According to the initial findings of the investigation, the call center would be involved in illegal activities. However, one hypothesis was rejected by the relatives of the disappeared, who accused the authorities of criminalizing the victims.
In recent years, human remains have been found in sacks or in clandestine graves in various areas of the state of Jalisco.
In 2021, for example, around 70 bags containing the remains of eleven people were discovered in Tonala near Guadalajara.
Mexico has recorded more than 340,000 murders and about 100,000 enforced disappearances since the start of a large and controversial military operation to fight drug trafficking in December 2006, mostly attributed to criminal organizations.