Rancho Izaguirre, spanning approximately 10,000 square meters in Teuchitlán, may have been used as a training camp for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Photos posted online show hundreds of discarded shoes and clothing items, as well as bullet casings from high powered rifles, and even charred bones.
Rancho Izaguirre was secretly used as a site for systematic human rights abuses (ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)
One letter read: “My love, if some day I don’t return, I only ask you to remember how much I love you.”
The Warrior Searchers of Jalisco group, who are on the lookout for the missing Mexicans, uncovered the camp last week after receiving a tip, according to the Los Angeles Times.
However, it remains a mystery why nothing else has been done since the site was first investigated in September 2024.
The ‘extermination camp’ was discovered in Jalisco (ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)
“It was a tremendous shock,” said group member Raul Servin Garcia.
“The first thought that occurs to you is to hope that no relative — a son, a husband — had ever been in this place, had ever been tortured or murdered there.”
Training areas
The Los Angeles Times reported that the institution was allegedly in operation for over 10 years.
During that time, criminal gang members would coerce people to join the group, training them up to become killers.
Indira Navarro, the leader of the Warrior Searchers group, told the outlet that one woman said she had been held against her will there for three years.
Non-compliance was reportedly met with severe punishment or death.
Detention zones
There were specifically designated areas which would confine abducted individuals.
Testimonies from survivors suggest that new arrivals were often beaten with wooden planks, and any resistance or attempts to escape were met with immediate execution.
The butcher shop
Letters were found on site (ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)
One section of the ranch, known as ‘the butcher shop’, was where prisoners were forced to dismember human bodies.
This practice was intended to desensitise individuals from violent activities.
“They didn’t teach us how to do it, so it was up to each person. There is not a day in which I do not think of it and there is not a day in which I am not tormented by it,” a survivor said. “I couldn’t even sleep but, at that moment, I had to do it in order to survive.”
Clandestine crematoriums
The group also discovered cremation furnaces, which are likely to have been used to dispose victims’ bodies. Photos show skeletal remains concealed beneath layers of brick slabs.
“They tortured us every day just to instill fear. The first thing they did once you arrived to the ranch —after taking away your clothes— was to beat you up with wooden planks,” a man who was captured there for two weeks said.
“Once you moved on to real guns there was no excuse to say no. If they sent you to get toilet paper or asked you to torture your partner you had to do it. There were no second chances given,” another added.
Who are the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)?
The CJNG came into power in Mexico in the late 2000s as a part of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Over the years, they have developed a reputation for aggressive tactics and violent confrontations with Mexican security forces and rival cartels.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said: “The first thing we have to do in that case is investigate, because the images are obviously painful, we really need to know what happened there before anything else.
“That’s why it’s important that there is a coordinated investigation, and obviously determining who is responsible.”
