STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Parents in Mexico have been looking for their missing children, thousands of them, and the hunt for clues led them to discover a ranch the drug cartels apparently used to train recruits. On that same ranch, they found bone fragments and piles of clothing. Those are just some of the graphic details in this report. We know it's early in the morning. If you need to go away, it lasts about seven minutes. We'll still be here. NPR's Eyder Peralta reports from Jalisco, Mexico.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: At the Izaguirre Ranch, these days, all you see is crews of forensic scientists filing in and out of the white tents the government has built along the edges of the vast sugarcane fields.
UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: (Speaking Spanish).
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PERALTA: An 82-year-old farmer tells me this was no-man's-land just a few weeks ago. He says members of the cartels would zoom past these fields.
UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "And we would just crouch down, not say anything because they could easily kill you."
We're not using his name because he fears retribution.
UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "And then at night, we would hear gunfire."
None of this should come as a surprise. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has been running training camps around here since at least 2017, when authorities dismantled four of them. This September, they raided the Rancho Izaguirre. They arrested 10 people, freed two and found one person dead. And a few weeks later at another nearby ranch, they freed 36 young men abducted by the cartels. The findings didn't get much attention until March, when a collective of grieving parents who call themselves Searching Warriors got into Rancho Izaguirre.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: In a country with 100,000 missing people, the images were haunting. They showed piles of shoes, shirts and backpacks that the parents assumed were once worn by the young people who were lured into joining the cartels.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: The collective said they also found pounds of bones and makeshift ovens, where they assume bodies were cremated. The governor of the state of Jalisco said that the bones at the ranch were not human. But here in Mexico, every time news like this bubbles up, it fills the parents of the missing with both hope and dread.
FEBE GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Us mothers are never wrong."
Febe Gonzalez (ph) says when she first saw images of the ranch, she knew in her heart at least one of her two missing sons was there.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Us mothers have a sixth sense."
Gonzalez remembers the day her older son Carlos (ph) went missing in 2019. He was working as an account executive at a bank. But one day, he was offered a job interview for a gig that paid much more.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: He told her, our life is going to change this year. She gave him a nicer shirt. He gave her a kiss on the cheek.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "And I always wiped my face 'cause his kisses were always wet."
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "And, oh, how I miss those kisses now."
It was the last time she saw him. Neighbors told her he was picked up by members of the cartel. So she went to the police. She went to the morgue, where they handed her a book full of pictures.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "They were heads. They were torsos and legs. I looked through pictures for 20 days."
One day, an official there took pity. She told her, you need to open a file with the prosecutor's office.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "It's when she told me, Carlos is disappeared."
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I told her, he's not disappeared. He just got picked up."
She gave authorities DNA samples. She gave them pictures and descriptions. And they told her, we'll call you when we find him.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I wouldn't get up. I didn't bathe. I wouldn't eat."
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "My hair was all tangled."
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "When I brushed my teeth, my gums bled."
All she did was wait for that call. She was trapped in a fog of depression for more than a year. Eventually, she joined a collective of mothers traveling through the state, trying to find their children. At one site, they found bags full of human remains.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: When the bags reached the lab, they were full of feet or heads.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: It wasn't a bag with a body. It was a bag full of torsos or a bag full of heads. She learned how cartels segmented bodies. She learned how investigators pieced them together like a puzzle. And she was always looking for Carlos, for his gray boots, for the nice shirt she gave him. And in the middle of that search, in March of 2023, her younger son Jonathan (ph) was abducted right after he picked up his kids from school. His three kids - 4, 6 and 10 - were in the car when he was taken.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "They took my dad," the kids said.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "The men with rifles took my dad."
And almost six years after her first son went missing, she stumbled upon her first clue. In pictures from the ranch, she spotted her older son's backpack. She thought, like her son, young men were being lured to the ranch with the promise of a job. Authorities believe the men were trained and then sent off to fight. The parents believe that at least some of them were killed and buried right at the ranch.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I just have this feeling that one of my kids is there."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Singing in non-English language).
PERALTA: The next day, I go to the main cathedral in Guadalajara. The archbishop of the city, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, has been outspoken on the disappeared. I ask him what the parish near the ranch knew and whether the priests notified police. He doesn't want to get into specifics, he says.
FRANCISCO ROBLES ORTEGA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: The people know. They know the disappeared. They even know who took them.
ROBLES ORTEGA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: But very often, what prevails is fear.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: That same afternoon, right next door, about a hundred students gathered to protest in front of the governor's palace. "Out with the narcostate," they shout. Andrea Aguirre (ph), a law student, is wearing a list of missing young people. It unfurls behind her like a macabre wedding veil.
ANDREA AGUIRRE: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "How much longer," she asks, "do we have to live in fear?"
AGUIRRE: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: The protesters throw fake blood against the walls of the palace. The governor isn't there. The police just watch. And at the edge of the crowd, two mothers hold onto pictures of their missing children.
Eyder Peralta, NPR News in Jalisco State, Mexico.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Singing in non-English language). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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