(2 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mexico City – 1 May 2024
1. Various of volunteers and security forces searching for human remains in field
2. Yellow tape at site of alleged illegal crematorium and police walking in background
3. Scorched shoe
4. Ash on ground
5. Ceci Flores, leader of group, searching for bodies of Mexico’s missing
6. Military guarding cordoned off area
7. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Ceci Flores, volunteer searcher:
"(On how she found out about an alleged clandestine crematorium) It was an anonymous call. Everything we do comes from anonymous calls and we know of another 14 places (where there could be bodies)."
8. Various of people searching for human remains
9. Police officer with search dog and firefighter searching for human remains
10. Close of yellow tape
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rosa Icela Guzmán Milla, volunteer searcher:
"I’m looking for my son and haven’t found anything. Yesterday afternoon, when I saw this news, it was very shocking. I wanted to run to the place and see it, to see if there’s anything (bodies). But no, so far it seems that there’s nothing."
12. Various of workers searching through ash
13. Various of workers inspecting scraps of clothes
14. Volunteer María de Jesús Soria Aguayo with stick to search for bodies
15. Various of burnt clothes on ground
16. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) María de Jesús Soria Aguayo, volunteer searcher:
"I’m here because I can tell you that many of the women who are still looking for their children unintentionally had to look for mine, and now I have found him. Now, my promise to these women is to continue searching until we can’t anymore, that’s when I’ll stop. But in the meantime we must keep searching because there’s still many (bodies) we haven’t found."
17. Various of Iztapalapa
STORYLINE:
Trailed by search dogs and police, María de Jesús Soria Aguayo and more than a dozen volunteers on Wednesday walked carefully through fields of weeds and dry earth with their eyes fixed on the ground.
On the fringes of Mexico City, the group began to search for human remains and other evidence after volunteer searchers said the site may be the location of a clandestine crematorium.
The body search comes after Ceci Flores, a leader of a group searching for the bodies of Mexico’s missing, announced on social media late Tuesday that her team had found bones, clandestine burial pits and ID cards around a charred pit the southern outskirts of the city.
Flores said the group learned about the site from "an anonymous call" and that they know of "another 14 places" where there could be remains of missing people.
More than 110,000 people have been declared missing amid ongoing cartel violence, according to Mexican authorities.
In the face of deep impunity, "madres buscadoras," or "searching mothers," like Soria Aguayo have formed their own independent groups to look for the remains of their missing loved ones in violence-torn swathes of Mexico.
"My promise to these women is to continue searching until we can’t anymore… because there’s still many (bodies) we haven’t found," said 54-year-old Soria Aguayo, whose son’s remains were recovered in Veracruz in 2022.
Flores’ announcement marked the first time in recent memory that anyone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the Mexican capital.
Soaring violence seen in large swathes of the country in recent years has yet to reach the capital – at least in its most visceral form.
Lara said experts were investigating to determine the nature of the remains found, and whether they were human.
AP Video by Martín Silva
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/f7b3fd817d784674aa6d80ba83b36760
