For the investigators, the human foot -- burned, but with some fabric still attached -- was the tipoff: Until recently, this squat, ruined house was a place where bodies were ripped apart and incinerated, where the remains of some of Mexico’s missing were obliterated.
Forensic technicians excavate a field on a plot of land referred to as a cartel"extermination site" where burned human remains are buried, on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. The insufficiency of investigations into Mexicos nearly 100,000 disappearances is evident. There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries, not counting places like this one, where the charred remains are measured only by weight.
At the Nuevo Laredo site -- to which The Associated Press was given access this month -- the insufficiency of investigations into Mexico’s nearly 100,000 disappearances is painfully evident. There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries, not counting places like this one, where the charred remains are measured only by weight.“We take care of one case and 10 more arrive,” said Oswaldo Salinas, head of the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s identification team.
The house has been cleared, but four blackened spaces used for cremation remain. In what was the bathroom, it took the technicians three weeks to carefully excavate the compacted mass of human remains, concrete and melted tires, said Salinas, who leads work at the site. Grease streaks the walls.
It wasn’t until 2018 -- the end of the last administration -- that a law passed, laying the legal foundations for the government to establish the National Search Commission. There followed local commissions in every state; protocols that separated searches from investigations, and a temporary and independent body of national and international technical experts supported by the U.N. to help clear the backlog of unidentified remains.
Perhaps the largest such site was yet another border setting near the mouth of the Rio Grande called “the dungeon,” in territory controlled by the Gulf cartel. The memory still stirs Macías. The first time he went he saw “pelvis, skulls, femurs, everything just lying there and I said to myself, ‘It can’t be.’”According to the Tamaulipas state forensic service, some 15 “extermination sites” have been found.
Security is a concern, and so authorities have separated the search function from the investigations -- the cartels appear less concerned with those just looking for bones, though anything they find could eventually become evidence in a prosecution. Each day before dusk, they are escorted to a safe house and don’t leave except to return the next day to the site.When cartel violence exploded in Tamaulipas in 2010, the capital’s morgue had space for six bodies.
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