An abandoned ranch in western Mexico that groups searching for missing relatives had claimed was an “extermination camp” — because of discarded personal items and burned remains found there — was a training hub for a major cartel, Mexico’s attorney general announced on Tuesday. But, he said “there is not a single piece of evidence to prove” that the ranch was the site of human cremations.
At a news conference presenting his office’s findings so far in the high-profile case, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said that the Izaguirre ranch in Teuchitlán, a village near Guadalajara in Jalisco state, was “totally proven” to have been used as a recruitment, training and operations center by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most violent criminal organizations in the country. He said that conclusion was based on testimonials and documents.
But in a departure from previous comments, Mr. Gertz insisted that there was no proof of cremations at the ranch.
Mr. Gertz said a container of very small bone fragments was found by the authorities who originally discovered the ranch in September. He said that studies conducted by a Mexico City university on evidence, dirt and other materials did not find heat levels over 200 degrees Celsius. Cremations, he said, require levels in excess of 800 degrees.
Earlier this month, Mr. Gertz said that investigators had not found evidence of crematories at the ranch, but that some human remains found there had “traces of some type of cremation.” And Mexico’s security minister, Omar García Harfuch, said last month that, based on a detained person’s testimony, the cartel went as far as killing those who resisted training or tried to escape.
Rancho Izaguirre in western Mexico last month.Credit…Fred Ramos for The New York Times