Breathe
By Yuriria Rodríguez Castro
To Maribel, Raúl, Leslie and Rubí, victims
and seekers who instead of commiserating,
are an example of how far
the courage and strength of the people can come through the
The Izaguirre Ranch is more a mix of all the impunity, corruption and the "intolerable relationship" between criminal organizations and some government authorities in Mexico. It is an Ayotzinapa and a San Fernando together and more. It is genocide, it is terrorism, it is drug trafficking. It is just one piece of a chain of ranches throughout the Jalisco Valleys Zone that also have the same criminal activity: they are, in addition to killing fields, large storage pits for human remains, meeting centers for forced and voluntary recruitment, giant altars for Santeria and the worship of Santa Muerte that are fed with hundreds of human remains, the first point of arrival of victims attracted by a false offer of employment, recreation centers for criminals, and much more that the evidence is gradually revealing.
Recently, a notice arrived to searchers with a map location that says "There is the other little school if you have the courage to go to the GN" (sic), about a location in El Carmen, which searchers say is just 40 minutes away from Rancho Izaguirre.
So far, despite the contamination of the crime scene, we have been able to observe that this may be a secondary scene and that in the surrounding area there may be other evidence that could shed light not only on the role of Rancho Izaguirre, but also on a large criminal structure operated by the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation in practically all of Jalisco and other areas of the country.
As we interviewed some of the searchers who first arrived at the ranch, there are many coincidences in the observations that, when compared with the collection of evidence recorded in photographs by the Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office, we noticed many omissions: we understand that after the surveys everything should be recorded, but even so there is no image of the collection of the evidence as a control, we do not know why.
The searchers who arrived at Rancho Izaguirre agree that there was no security seal at the entrance of the property, they think that maybe it is because another collective had already entered before to take a video without noticing the human remains, but they also suppose that it could be an omission by the authorities. Recently, and after the scene is already too contaminated, the State Prosecutor's Office sent a restraining order preventing the searchers from working, just after another anonymous call warned the activists that they will find 200 more human remains if they dig to the end of the property.
It should be clarified that this analysis is preliminary to a broader and more criminological work that we are undertaking to deliver to the searchers and victims who have had the kindness and courage to talk to us.
First, it should be noted that there are precedents to believe that this scene was previously manipulated by the authorities:
Scene 1: In September 2024, the first recruitment camp is located in the same area, in Estanzuela, Teuchitlán, where one of the suspects of having participated in the videotaped homicide of the young men from Lagos de Moreno is arrested.
Scene 2: where they detain 37 people; later the authorities said that through interrogation they realized that almost all of the detainees were victims of recruitment and released most of them, except for two.
Scene 3: Arrival of the colectivos and authorities at Rancho Izaguirre on March 5, 2025. There is no security seal, only the pin is placed on top, they find remains on the surface when they enter between the three holes that could have been used to burn bodies, this indicates to the searchers that they had to excavate there. The Prosecutor's Office does not register these skeletal remains on the surface in the first instance. There are also two live and healthy roosters, as well as a lit candle inside near an altar to Santa Muerte, suggesting a recent presence. All the rest are piles of scattered clothes, household goods in the kitchen, as well as a Jehovah's Witness bible that allowed the identification of a victim; also backpacks, combs, brushes, pantyhose, wallets, etc.
Thanks to that bible found in the kitchen and some tennis shoes that the victim was photographing and shared in her last posts on Facebook, Merari could be located, who apparently boarded an UBER that would take her to the private security company where she would have lodging, food and self-defense training; her last photos were uploaded on May 20, 2024. Rubí, Merari's sister, still hopes that her sister is alive, as there were signs of recent activity and does not doubt that she could be a survivor, "because a pair of shoes and a bible does not mean that she is dead, they could have left things behind", says Rubí.
One of the searchers records that he observed a garment with blood on it. It is also not in the catalog of clothes that the Prosecutor's Office released. In spite of everything, we know that it was the clothes they arrived with and their arrival accessories, because some family members have already begun to contact the collectives locating their victims.
The searchers found and took photographs of notebooks with training lessons, as well as lists with aliases or nicknames; in some cases they have also been useful, as they already had that nickname before they joined the ranch, in others, they were given it at the ranch.
Some letters and messages are calligraphic evidence that will be useful if they are worked with professionalism, trying to clarify the information to help the victims, not trying to reduce the number of homicides, even if that means increasing the number of unknown missing persons, which are the highest in Latin America.
The space is laid out and has three bathrooms and a kitchen, which means that it had to be lifted for possible DNA samples that could survive the inclement weather and space conditions.
In the conversations, the searchers pointed out that the walls of the roofed warehouse and the red-painted room were covered with stains from gotcha shots. In the photos from the state prosecutor's office, the walls look neat and shiny.
Objects as evidence
Outside, some live roosters and human remains on the holes that served as ovens, the detection of drums with substances, they are warned not to dig because of the presence of caustic soda, very corrosive.
Inside the cellars, the clothes and personal items such as wallets were disturbed and only one ID was found. When the owner was found, he said that his wallet had been stolen.
"The clothes were disarranged, except for the socks in another place; the mattresses were not in the lower part as they appear in the photos of the Attorney General's Office, those were in rooms that I want to think belonged to the bosses, to the ringleaders, but the cellar where they supposedly kept the people was dirty and they had an altar of Santa Muerte, because they put their candles there. In the suitcases there was deodorant, toothpaste, combs. And when you enter the ranch on the right side there is the cellar, then there was a smaller cellar but alone, it is said that they burned the clothes there".
You walked several meters and there was a room that looked like a kitchen, next to it there was another room where there were things like road signs with gunshot wounds, they used them as target practice; there were gotcha balls, there were drums, belts, car batteries, tires...".
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