Nationwide vigils have been taking place in Mexico with shoes and candles placed in remembrance of the victims of the recently discovered mass grave in Jalisco. More than 124,000 people are officially listed as missing.
Thousands of people across Mexico gathered on the streets on Saturday to demand justice after families discovered a mass grave with charred bones, shoes and clothing at a suspected cartel training ground.
In several cities, demonstrators laid out hundreds of pairs of shoes and candles on the ground, in remembrance of the victims. They carried posters that read: “Mexico is a mass grave” and “We demand answers.”
Vigils took place in the western state of Jalisco, where the mass grave was found, and in other cities including Mexico City, Tijuana, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Puebla, Veracruz, Cancun and Colima.
Mexico’s missing people
On March 5, families of some of the more than 100,000 missing people in Mexico discovered human remains at a ranch where drug cartels were thought to have kept forced recruits.
They found hundreds of pairs of shoes and clothing with the remains, believed to belong to the victims.
A group dedicated to locating these missing people, the Guerreros Buscadores collective, described the site as an “extermination center” with illegal crematoriums. The gruesome discovery has sent shockwaves across the nation plagued by cartel-related violence.
The site had been raided as recently as September of 2024 by the National Guard and the state prosecutor’s office without crucial evidence being detected, the United Nations Human Rights Office pointed out.
Officially, some 124,059 people in Mexico are registered as missing, most of them since 2006 when the government declared a war on drugs.
Several other mass graves and illegal crematoriums have been discovered across Mexico.
Edited by: Kieran Burke
DW News
