Activists, firefighters, authorities and forensic experts participated this Thursday in the search for human remains in a large wooded area of Mexico City where according to reports more than a hundred missing people are buried.
The appointment was in Ajuscoa hill of volcanic origin in the south of the Mexican capital.
“As it is a lonely area, that is why people (suspected criminals) are given the opportunity to come and dump the bodies,” Araceli Olmedo Cruz, 40, who is looking for her son Benjamín, who was last seen in a nearby neighborhood in April 2024, told AFP.
It is estimated that in Mexico there are more than 127,000 missingthe vast majority in the midst of the violence unleashed after the government launched a military anti-drug operation in 2006.
Arnulfo García is looking for his mother, Plácida, whom he hasn’t heard from for just a year but he hopes is still alive.
“We had searched in urban areas of the city, we put up posters,” he said, explaining that he decided to go to the jobs in Ajusco to help and try to contact authorities to support him in locating his mother.
The search days were announced by different media and will last until October 31.
Although no findings similar to the clandestine graves located in different states have been reported in Mexico City, some with more than one hundred bodies, in recent years complaints have multiplied that the Ajusco is used to hide corpses.
The groups that participated in this search estimate that there may be between 130 and 150 buried or hidden bodies in the area.
The search, in which 430 people participated, was carried out by sectors under the guidance of personnel who know the area and with the presence of armed elements from the capital’s prosecutor’s office.
The mothers dug the ground with forks and shovels while others with machetes and even heavy machinery cut the undergrowth.
On October 21, the UN Committee against Forced Disappearances warned that “systematic disappearances” are occurring in Mexico.
