Las Rastreadoras de Sinaloa Find Nine More Bodies Near Los Mochis

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from Ríodoce

"Las Rastreadoras" Joined Forces with the Association of Mothers of Missing Persons
For The Common Cause

By: Luis Fernando Najera
Nov 30, 2017

Macabre Findings:

Three months ago, the Association of Mothers with Missing Persons joined their searches with the group known as "Las Rastreadoras".  They knew that behind the city, the outskirts of Los Mochis, Sinaloa ie, was a new clandestine grave with an indeterminate number of bodies.

Despite having vague indications, they could not search the place because more information was scarce in the short term. In that 90-day period, at least three other searches turned out to be unsuccessful, although many others were positive for the group working on their own terms.

On Sunday, November 19, instead of spending the day with their families, they gathered for one more day of searching, just as they have done since they were formed, in 2015.

By their own means, armed with shovels, pick axes, machetes, rods, and  pry bars they organized their search party. They chose a place: behind Urbi Villa del Rey, where they had heard that there were bodies buried, where months before they had found a corpse in that same location.

Getting to the place was not difficult  because it is just behind the city. It is like the backyard of Los Mochis, which, unfortunately is also a garbage dump. The terrain is geometric, almost square, no more than two blocks, about 200 linear meters.  You have to cross through town south towards the outskirts until you reach a dirt road that divides the planted corn fields up on a hill.

A short dirt path leads to the macabre vacant lot. However, there are a couple of wide ditches that are filled with branches, litter, trash and even thick poplar trunks, but they are also used  by the clandestine gravediggers and or murderers who transport the corpses in the trunks of their cars and  vans: the  bodies of people who have been disappeared, murdered and left their families in a state of stagnant despair.

Once inside they have to move carefully so as not to wound themselves on the  thorny brush and  thistles or step on human excrement, to check out the piles of garbage and sharpen their eyes to discover what  seems intentionally put there to hide something.

Thus, with the experience accumulated in dozens of searches, the "Las Rastreadoras" spread out on the premises. In pairs or groups of four, they take different courses. The first team observes two large stones placed on top of half-dried branches. They take it as a sign. They move the rocks with their bare hands, because  they do not have gloves to protect them. They remove the branches and discover disturbed earth. They hurriedly make a hole from which a nauseating smell emerges. They dig up bones that seem human to them, but it is still uncertain. They take out more dirt and debris  and discover the outline of a skeleton.

They calm down, pray, and refer to the man with pious words. They offer him a real grave where his family will mourn him. They tell him that he will no longer be alone, that he will soon rest with his family, and that no one, not a policeman, a bully or a killer, should have ever brought  him here. They ask him  whatever did he do to deserve this deserve this fate. The skeleton does not respond.

Once the mortuary protocol has been completed, they call for the  services of the Vice District Office of Justice, North Zone to reveal the crime scene. They arrive with an attitude, rabid, brandishing their rifles, removing all, threatening to stop them if they contaminate the place with their footsteps. The Undertakers follow them. For them there is no law. They show disdain over the findings, the bones, the bodies, they  curse and threaten the group. For "Las Rastreadoras', it's them: the heartless ones.

The "Trackers" have no fear and do not flinch before the rudeness of the police and forensic experts, much less be intimidated by the haughty morticians. They take their distance, breath air and reorganize. They pick here and there, and they keep digging. They find nothing more , but they are not discouraged.

They have already been separated about 50 meters from the clandestine grave with the bones, and the experts no longer take notice of them. They are in their own world. They look over the place and discover leaf litter. They remove it and see earth removed. They dig, and some huaraches appear. They do not know it yet, but inside are two bodies.

 Hours later the relatives say they would know that those huaraches were the shoes worn by a mechanic named  Marco Antonio "N", 50 years old and his companion, Manuel Salvador "N", 22 years old, who were taken from a house on October 17.

They are quiet. They walk a few steps, four, at the most, and see more earth removed. They dig, and another body emerges; they get excited, they clean; remove more earth, they dig, and the fourth body comes to light; they continue, find more earth disturbed and the fifth body; they continue and find the sixth corpse; they go on, and suddenly everything calms down. There is no more.

As they retrace their footsteps they discover near the last clandestine grave was  a half face with a macabre smile, a semicircle stuck in a bush.

The searchers are all exhausted and retire. They point out the location of the the new graves to the experts and detectives. The work has accumulated. Then they  are removed. 

They start to relax, walking aimlessly, poking the  earth without searching, by inertia. They take a break under a young poplar tree and observe branches in a mound, remove them and see that dirt has been removed. They dig in and find some socks. Then a pair of pants and they see skin. They have found another clandestine grave. The experts are called and remove two bodies: a man and a woman.

Later, "Las Rastreadoras" will find out  that they were the bodies of Blanca Sarahí "N", 34 years old and Sergio Alberto "N", 42, who disappeared on November 7, days after they were detained by the Municipal Police and accused of home invasion robberies.

Of the eight bodies unearthed in the vacant lot, "Las Rastreadoras'' already had firm indications of the identity of four of them, and as the days passed they learned that two others would be José Candelario "N" and Luis Daniel "N", two more young people who disappeared together.

The day after the discovery, the ninth body was found by police who responded to a citizen report.

Mirna Nereyda Medina Quiñónez, founder of the civil association "Desaparecidos de El Fuerte", also known as the "Las Rastreadoras" said they are returning to the property because they are sure there are more clandestine graves still undiscovered.

She assured that the numbers of disappeared in Ahome and El Fuerte are chilling, as they have reports of 594 people absent, of which 113 bodies have been recovered and 89 bodies have been delivered to their families and  mourners.

"The figures are unreal, because every day women continue to come to report more and more missing. Neither we, nor the prosecution of justice has the  real number of the disappeared. "

She said that only in November, 22 cases have been reported. Then a woman from El Fuerte reported case number 23, as her son had recently gone missing; he was a bureaucrat who had been fired by the mayor, Nubia Ramos Salazar.

The Missing Strangers:

For the Vice-prosecution of Justice in the Northern Zone, the case of this vacant lot outside Los Mochis is a mystery because none of the bodies claimed by the alleged relatives have been delivered to them yet. For them, the genetic tests are unbridgeable. The numbers are also incongruous, because in November only 17 people "officially" have been reported as disappeared.

"A Worrying issue":

Álvaro Ruelas Echave, mayor of Ahome, said that the discovery of the graves just outside of the city is "a worrying issue" and that they will respond with greater institutional coordination. He expressed his grief and despite doubts he assured that neither the group of the "Rastreadoras" will be alone because "they have the institutional and personal support in such a harsh situation".

"What they do is an arduous but praiseworthy task that must be supported."

Complicity, omission, impunity:

For the professor of criminal law and President of the College of Criminologists of the Northwest, Leonel Alfredo Valenzuela Gastélum, having found eight clandestine tombs just outside the urban area of ​​the city confirms that it is crime that governs the municipality and that the State has failed in its policies to combat it and the  criminal prevention results are nonexistent.

"It is evident that authority has been omitted and should be investigated as a partner and co-responsible for the criminal wave that is upon us, has never left us , but has remained; It is evident that impunity is on the rise because there are no efficient investigators, even though they exist on the payroll but  they are inefficient; the results that are exaggerated  in reports are out of context and not the reality. "

Martín López Félix, lawyer litigant and not aligned the government, said that in Ahome there is a forced execution of civilians by criminal groups and /or the authorities that applies a vigilante justice, whose sentence is execution: "although the death penalty is prohibited in the country".

He called for "a thorough investigation that allows families justice for the loss of their loved one. "

However, he acknowledged that justice is not applied as the paper points out, because the investigation research portfolio should start with the finding of "Las Rastreadoras" and deepen to prevent them from continuing to have to 'work',  "but the authority is complacent with the group , the authorities could and should facilitate the work themselves".

Councilman Miguel Ángel Camacho Sánchez, secretary of the Public Security Commission in the Ahome town hall, said that the events in Urbi Villa should be investigated thoroughly, including all the police that operate in the municipality. "We could talk about a complicit omission."