A Horrific Find in Mexico's Mass Graves

Mexico has a disappearing people problem that has been on the rise over the last couple of decades. The government confirms that the country has about 130,000 disappeared people, just over 18,000 of which are children, while claiming that only about one-third of them are genuine missing persons cases or people who show some signs of life.

The rest are the result of cartel and organized crime activity — rivals, kidnapped people, informants, or others caught in territorial disputes — but critics say that number isn't accurate. It's much higher. There's really no way to confirm the actual numbers, but any disappeared person is one too many. 

And given that the number of clandestine graves found in Mexico is also on the rise, it's entirely possible that the number is much higher. The Mexican government likes to downplay this topic, but a United Nations committee on enforced disappearances has estimated that more than 4,500 graves have been found, containing over 6,200 bodies and 4,600 human remains, in addition to some 72,000 unidentified human remains.  Other human rights organizations have cited similar numbers. 

Because official forensic capacity is overwhelmed, many of these graves are found via volunteers or family-led search collectives.

And that's exactly what led to the gruesome discovery of over 1,600 children's teeth. 

Buscando Cuerpos en Todo México (or Searching for Bodies Across Mexico) is a group of mothers who are searching for their children. They're led by former local congresswoman Margarita López Pérez, and they claim that in 2021, they discovered smoke near a garbage dump in Zacapu in the state of Michoacán. The group began inspecting the area and found skeletal remains, including what an expert identified as a baby's tooth. 

In the years since, they've excavated the site and found what they say are 1,600 children's teeth (ages one to 12), in addition to adult teeth, vertebrae, and phalanges. López, whose own daughter went missing in 2011, suspects that the teeth belong to at least 80 children, likely many more, who were potentially the victims of sexual exploitation, organ trafficking, or child pornography. The land was allegedly linked to a Sinaloa drug trafficker and served as a makeshift crematorium. 

Both the Mexican federal prosecutor's office and the Michoacán state prosecutor’s office say that they have no record or confirmation of any of this information. But that doesn't mean these claims should be dismissed. As I said, the Mexican government often downplays talk of mass graves and cartel violence, and groups like this often find these things that official search teams miss.

According to various Mexican media reports, there is also a video from 2019 recirculating online along with this information, featuring an upset woman talking about seeing "dead or sedated children being put into a trailer." It may or may not be related. When the video originally went live, Michoacán authorities investigated and denied the discovery of a trailer or mass grave linked to her testimony

Even so, Senator Laura Esquivel Torres, a member of the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), brought the matter up recently. She chairs the Senate’s Commission on the Rights of Children and Adolescents and asked for a moment of silence for the alleged victims and demanded answers from the Attorney General's Office and state officials.   

The group that found the remains has also been rallying outside the office, asking for genetic testing on the remains.

López has accused the government of downplaying the issue, and she even claims that a federal prosecutor and forensic expert were present during the recovery. She's also calling for help from the international community, particularly the Red Cross.

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