(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. 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)."
5. Wide of people searching for human remains
6. Police officer with search dog and firefighter searching for human remains
7. Various of workers searching through ash, inspecting scraps of clothes
8. Military guarding cordoned off area
9. Iztapalapa in distance
STORYLINE:
Trailed by search dogs and police, 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.
Ulises Lara, Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, said Tuesday morning that police went to the addresses listed on the ID cards recovered and "found that both of the people to whom those cards belonged are alive and in good health."
Lara said one of them, a woman, said her card and cellphone had been stolen about a year ago, when thieves snatched her phone and ID card from her hands while she was stuck in traffic.
While that ruled out the possibility the woman’s body could have been dumped there, it did suggest that criminals had used the site to dispose of evidence.
Lara said experts were investigating to determine the nature of the remains found, and whether they were human.
The prosecutors office said it was also reviewing security camera footage and looking for possible witnesses.
After hours of searching through fields on the rural outskirts of the Mexican capital, volunteers came up with little other than frustration.
While some in the group cast doubt that they would find any bodies, Flores said they planned to press on in their search, adding they had already spent two days searching the area before finding what they believed to be human remains.
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/cec6c807efcd46e4a33e278e1d1e1acf
