🌊 How Death Camps Came to Mexico

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By Barratt Dewey

In the dry soil of Teuchitlán, Mexico, volunteers searching for missing relatives recently uncovered what Mexican media have called “the ranch of horror.” What they found was shocking, even for a country where over 120,000 people have vanished: Cremation ovens, charred bone fragments, hundreds of personal belongings, and abandoned shoes, reminiscent of the Holocaust.

This “extermination camp,” as search organizations have labeled it, is believed to have been operated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's most violent criminal organizations. The site appears to have served multiple purposes: A training ground for cartel recruits, a torture chamber, and a place to dispose of bodies without a trace.

As shocking as these revelations was another: That Mexico’s government may have known about the site. 

In this deep-dive, we explore Mexico’s crisis of disappearances – and the corruption that enables it. 

Disappearances serve multiple purposes for Mexico's cartels. They eliminate opposition without increasing official homicide statistics; they terrorize communities into silence; and they demonstrate power and control over territory.

According to Mexico's National Registry of Missing Persons, over 122,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since records began in 1962. Most of these have happened since 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderón launched the country’s "war on drugs.” Tens of thousands of people now vanish each year, with the Crisis Group estimating that around 75 Mexicans vanished each day in 2023 and 2024.

The reasons for disappearances vary, but there are patterns. Cartels increasingly rely on forced recruitment, which is done through kidnapping or tricking people into joining them. People who resist are killed.

Men between 30 and 40 years old are the most frequent victims of disappearances. Women and girls also often disappear, mostly into sex trafficking networks. Disappeared men are much more likely to be found dead than women.

Migrants crossing Mexico toward the US, activists, journalists, and indigenous community leaders are also targets. In 2022, the Committee to Protect Journalists listed Mexico as one of the deadliest places in the world to work in media, while human rights group Global Witness named it the most dangerous country for environmental activists.

The “extermination camp” discovered this month bears the fingerprints of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico's most powerful criminal groups. Led by a drug lord known as "El Mencho," the CJNG has transformed from a splinter group of El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel into a dominant force. It controls large swaths of land and has operations in at least 27 of Mexico’s 32 states. It’s known for forcibly recruiting its members, often luring young men through fake job postings.

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While Mexico is often described as a place where cartels have more control than the state, it’s more complicated than that: In many cases, the cartel is the state, as evidenced by the direct participation – or, at least, inaction – of authorities in missing persons cases.  

Families often complain that authorities themselves discourage the opening of missing persons cases. Others report that authorities often misclassify cases to conceal the high numbers of missing people. 

In 2021, a UN committee found evidence of collusion between Mexican authorities and organized crime, confirming what many victims' families have long suspected: Their government is part of the problem, not the solution. As one human rights advocate told the AP, “In many places in Mexico, what you have is the authorities colluded with those who have been the perpetrators of the disappearances.”

And the discovery of the “extermination camp” may be the most disturbing example of that yet. 

After the cartel grounds were discovered, Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero took control of the investigation. Soon after, he announced that authorities in the state, Jalisco, hadn’t just been aware of the site – they had visited it six months earlier.

According to Manero, the Jalisco authorities did not test any human remains there or identify the clothing or shoes they found. Manero said they also failed to register any evidence or fingerprints, or run checks on the vehicles there, three of which were later found to have been stolen.

In other words: State authorities went to the ranch, looked around, and took no action. 

Manero and Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, are promising to change this. The problem is that she had promised to do so before the camp was even found. 

Soon after taking office, Sheinbaum declared a “zero tolerance” policy for cartels. Facing potentially crippling 25% tariffs from the Trump Administration, she pledged a hardline approach, deploying troops who have conducted mass arrests – over 900 in Sinaloa alone since October – and thereby forced cartels to curb or shift operations.

But the discovery and apparent cover-up of the camp suggests little has actually changed.

The situation has drawn parallels to a national tragedy that took place in 2014, when 43 students traveling on a bus disappeared. It has since emerged that their disappearance took place with support from the authorities. That incident, known as Ayotzinapa, became one of the clearest signs of Mexico’s crime problem and the government’s complicity in it.

Facing speculation that the Jalisco camp could become the next Ayotzinapa, Sheinbaum has said she will not let this “become my Achilles’ heel.” She has since pledged to strengthen the commission responsible for searching for missing persons and eliminate the 72-hour waiting period to begin investigations into disappearances. 

For many Mexicans, though, these are just words. Only once the disappearances end will they believe the government is serious about stopping them.

Editor’s Note

Lots of readers have been asking for more world news coverage, so we hope you enjoyed today’s story. We’re curious to hear takes from our Mexican readers in particular: Is President Sheinbaum serious about tackling these issues? Reply to let us know.

In case you missed them, here are our past five stories: 

• Is stopping deportations partisan politics?

• Defunding the ONA: Good idea or bad?

• Roca goes diamond mining in Sierra Leone

• How billionaires took over college sports

• Why a transgender vegan cult killed a border officer

And some reader replies: 

First off, a few readers wrote in yesterday to note that Judge Boasberg was appointed by President George W. Bush and promoted to his current position by President Obama. That’s true and we should have clarified that, although it’s typical to note the person who appointed a judge to their current position, not their first one. Also, we did say he was approved 96-0, indicating across-the-aisle support.

Sarah wrote: 

Editor’s note: The meme didn’t say “gang members.” 

Tom wrote:

Editor’s note: If you think MSNBC is looking to buy a news company run by two white guys named Max and Max, you are mistaken. 

And Ray wrote:

Keep the feedback coming. 

That’s all for today. See you tomorrow.

–Max and Max