Mexican cartel mystery: hundreds of shoes, charred bones at possible killing site

Even in Mexico, where stories of massacres, kidnappings and clandestine graves provide daily news fodder, the recent revelations in western Jalisco state have caused a commotion.

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Gruesome online images from a ranch apparently once used as a drug cartel training camp show hundreds of discarded shoes, backpacks, pants, shirts and other items, along with pictures of charred bones, bullet casings and clips from high-powered rifles.

Among the handwritten entries found in a notebook were numbered columns of nicknames – purportedly a coded ledger of ex-captives – and a farewell letter from someone that read: “My Love if Some day I don’t Return I only ask you to remember how much I Love you”.

Inside one cinder-block building at the ranch was a candle-bedecked shrine to Santa Muerte (Holy Death), a female folk saint whose cult is often associated with Mexican organised crime.

Izaguirre Ranch. Photo: EPA-EFE
Izaguirre Ranch. Photo: EPA-EFE

Disseminating the disturbing images on social media this month were members of a search group that entered the ranch seeking missing loved ones among Mexico’s more than 120,000 “disappeared”. Even the veteran searchers – accustomed to violence, threats and secret graves – were aghast.

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