Breathe
By Sandra Romandía
Ten days ago, when the collectives of searchers for the disappeared discovered the horror of Rancho Izaguirre in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, the news shook the country and transcended borders. An extermination camp with clandestine ovens, the possibility of thousands of murdered and burned victims (even though the authorities now say there were no ovens), and the deafening silence of the authorities.
But at Emeequis we asked ourselves a question: whose ranch was it before it became a death factory?
The answer we found in the investigation published this Monday under the title "Rancho Izaguirre: bought by force in 2012, returned in the shadows in 2025", written by Esteban David Rodríguez, led us to another horror: dispossession.
That ranch belonged to Don Genaro (a fictitious name for security reasons), an ejidatario whose family had worked the land since the post-revolution period. In 2012, a group from the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation (CJNG) broke into his house, subdued his teenage daughter and presented him with a choice that was not really a choice: his land or his daughter's life.
The criminals kept the land. The State, with indifference.
For more than a decade, a silent massacre took place on that ranch. And when the country finally learned what was happening there, another act of bureaucratic black magic occurred: in 2025, the property appeared in the municipal records of Teuchitlán, but no longer as ejido land, but as private property.
No ejidal assembly, no documented procedures, no official demarcation, absolutely nothing.
Mexico is not only a country where crime plunders; it is a country where the authorities pave the way for it to legalize what it has stolen.
Following the publication of the report and my participation in the program of journalist Adela Micha, who generously granted me 25 minutes to talk about this story, we have received an avalanche of complaints.
Messages on social networks, emails, testimonies in the institutional mailboxes of Emeequis. Dozens of stories of ranches taken away, houses taken by force, properties that change hands without papers, but with violence.
Dispossession is not only a constant, but a growing phenomenon. In the last three years of Enrique Peña Nieto's government and the first three years of Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration, complaints of dispossession increased 50%. Currently, between 28,000 and 30,000 complaints of dispossession are filed every year in Mexico.
The numbers, however, do not reflect the full reality. The number of unreported thefts is incalculable. Cases like that of Don Genaro, who never reported the theft of his plot of land out of fear, are replicated throughout the country. There are areas where no reports are made because the Public Prosecutor's Office is part of the problem.
Dispossession has become a multi-million dollar business for organized crime. Stolen land is used as safe houses, training camps and even businesses. In states such as Tamaulipas, Chihuahua and Jalisco, criminal groups keep the land papers in order with the complicity of networks of lawyers and municipal officials.
The Izaguirre Ranch is just the tip of the iceberg of a pattern that is repeated with surgical precision throughout the country. A systematic pattern where crime takes by force and the state whitewashes the roles.
Don Genaro 's case exposes the modus operandi by which organized crime appropriates land. It is not only about the initial violence of dispossession, but also about the legal framework that allows it to be consolidated.
The land where the extermination camp operated in Teuchitlán never changed ownership in official documents. The plot remained in the name of Don Genaro, which prevented any suspicion about the illegal seizure of the land.
But in January 2025, something changed. The municipality of Teuchitlán sent Don Genaro a notice of property tax collection. His land, until then ejido, was now listed as private property.
In order for an ejido land to change its ownership regime and become private, an assembly of ejidatarios, authorization from the National Agrarian Registry (RAN) and procedures before the Ministry of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (SEDATU) are required. None of these steps were taken. However, in the official records, the process was completed without the family's knowledge.
How was the dispossession legalized? Which officials facilitated the change of ownership? How many other lands have been stolen and laundered in the same way?
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