▲ The Jovenes Buscadores de Sonora collective reported the discovery of a bonfire with charred human remains, as well as two complete bones in clandestine graves on a property in the municipality of Santa Ana, north of that entity.Photo Cristina Gomez Lima
Cristina Gomez Lima
Correspondent
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, February 7, 2022, p. 8
Santa Ana, Son., The groups Madres Buscadoras and Jovenes Buscadores de Sonora reported the discovery of an extermination camp in which there are remains of a bonfire with thousands of charred human fragments and three complete bones, in an ejidal property in the municipality of Santa Ana, 100 kilometers from the border line between Mexico and the United States.
Cecilia Flores Armenta, leader of the Searching Mothers of Sonora, estimated that there would be the remains of some 50 people at the site who are presumed to have been cremated at different times, but they will require a backhoe to open the pit.
The activist, who has received threats from criminal groups to stop her work, criticized that the Sonora Prosecutor’s Office always tries to minimize our work, but for us what counts is what we look at and find
.
The search in Santa Ana was carried out on Saturday and yesterday by the group Jovenes Buscadores de Sonora, recently formed, after receiving an anonymous complaint that there was a clandestine cemetery in the vicinity of the San Vicente ejido, passing the Laguna de Los Abuelos, in the kilometer three of the Santa Ana-Ejido El Claro highway.
Jovenes Buscadores de Sonora is the 12th group formed in the entity with the purpose of finding missing persons. From 2018 to date, more than 8,000 missing people have been reported in this entity and at least 700 graves have been located. In 2021, 79 cavities were found, which placed the state in third place nationally in such findings.
Milagros Valenzuela, 21, who heads the group, explained that some 15 men and women between the ages of 18 and 21 traveled to northern Sonora to support the search for the Searching Mothers of Santa Ana.
He commented that upon arrival an alleged criminal group threatened them to stop the activity and return to Hermosillo, they even placed artifacts known as ponchallantas on the road.
From that moment we realized that it was a risk area and that we could find ourselves with a positive search. Then a truck arrived to remove us from the place and indeed further on there was the place of the bonfire with thousands of charred bones.
. The young woman is looking for her two brothers who were victims of forced disappearance.
For its part, the Sonora Attorney General’s Office reported that the expert services area recovered the evidence that was on the site; the bone remains apparently were passed through fire and the bones were complete.
The agency indicated that it will be the forensic scientific intelligence laboratory that will carry out genetic tests to determine his identity. For that, non-governmental organizations called on people with missing relatives to file a complaint and request a DNA study.
