Clandestine Graves Found Where You Least Expect It: Jalisco

"Char" for Borderland Beat 

This article was translated and reposted from EL OCCIDENTAL 

For the collectives it is difficult if they do not have the information to request a search warrant; Luz de Esperanza does it under protocols.

Elizabeth Ibal | El Occidental

Abandoned old houses in downtown Guadalajara or traditional neighborhoods are now used as clandestine graves. An anonymous call led them there, to the searching mothers who however have encountered impediments to search: It is private property and search warrants are needed.

The last discovery of two skeletons was in the neighborhood of Las Conchas, but it is a replica of what happened in the neighborhood of Analco, both near the old truck station and downtown Guadalajara. According to the municipal government, it is estimated that 176,000 homes are abandoned throughout the city, 900 of them in the downtown area alone.

Hence even the program that Guadalajara has launched to try to repopulate Downtown and regularize those homes that were trapped in the past and in limbo, as a result of long hereditary lawsuits that passed from generation to generation without being resolved and where today the owners do not have the slightest interest in recovering, mainly due to tax debts or lack of resources to rehabilitate the properties.

That is the condition of the property number 184 of Núñez Morquecho street, in the Las Conchas neighborhood of Guadalajara, where two skeletons were found. Susy, one of the searchers said that this is one of several suspicious farms among them the 190 of the same street where the last sign of her brother Jesus Rodriguez, 33 years old, disappeared in December 2021, was registered. She asked for a month ago for the intervention of the authorities and until now they have been present. The use of residential homes for the burial of human remains began in July 2018 in the Villa Fontana Aqua subdivision in Tlajomulco, which although part of the Guadalajara Metropolitan Zone, is outside the periphery of the state capital.

From then on, graves began to proliferate in abandoned farms and vacant lots mainly in Tlajomulco where 65 have been counted so far in the administration from December 1, 2018 to August 31, 2022. That same year, on August 3, the first one was located in Guadalajara at the intersection of Béjar and Oviedo in the Santa Elena de la Cruz neighborhood which caused a stir because it was the first one in the urban area six kilometers from the Historic Center of Guadalajara; in this one 10 bodies were located and two people were arrested.

In the last five years the Special Prosecutor's Office for Missing Persons of Jalisco reports five graves located in the municipality of Guadalajara. In May 2019 another grave was located in the Periodistas neighborhood where they found a safe house in which there was also a grave in which they extracted 8 bodies, according to data from the Special Prosecutor's Office on Missing Persons.

Other clandestine burial sites were in January 2021 in Colinas de Huentitán where four bodies were found and in April 2022, in the Presa Laurel neighborhood where 2 bodies were located. Others in May 2023, the area known as La Sierra in Colinas de Huentitán where eight bodies were found.

Search warrants make it difficult

Hector Flores, founder of the collective Luz de Esperanza, assures that the discoveries in downtown Tapatío or in urban areas are not new, few are found, they must be done by search warrants as they are privately owned properties.

There may be graves in old hotels in the city.

Hector Flores, founder of the collective Luz de Esperanza considers that from the reports that the collective has, there could also be graves in some hotels in the city, specifically in the area of the Antigua Central Camionera, precisely a few blocks from where the Searching Mothers found the grave.

"There are two hotels that I requested in my son's investigation folder, with the intervention, very recently. I find it very strange that they haven't found anything. The Prosecutor's Office intervened those two hotels there by Central Vieja, they have not found anything. I believe that there may even be burial sites, especially in these types of hotels where there is no control of the people.

"There is a very famous hotel in the same area, the Prosecutor's Office itself, when I spoke with them, they said, 'yes we know that they took people there to torture them', after a kidnapping they took them there, the issue is very hot, as they say". He suggested that there should be a type of alert in all the hotels and implement a mechanism for missing persons, who could arrive there.

The Prosecutor's Office, through its context analysis area, should manage these searches.

Source: EL OCCIDENTAL

GUADALAJARA, JALISCO