Armed men seen on video targeting group searching for relatives in Jalisco

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Masked and heavily armed men have circulated a video denouncing people searching for missing relatives at the site of what authorities said was a cartel training camp in the western Mexican state of Jalisco.

In a video circulating Monday night, a man, flanked by others standing in formation, read a statement identifying them as members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel. He questioned the motivations of the searchers who said last week they had found hundreds of articles of clothing and charred bones at a ranch outside Guadalajara.

The Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating the cartel site, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Associated Press could not independently confirm who was behind the video.

Security analyst David Saucedo said Tuesday he did not doubt that the Jalisco cartel made it, citing its similarity with other videos that authorities had connected to the group. Its intention was to clean the cartel’s image and push back against the negative publicity generated by a week of exhaustive coverage of the site.

The Jalisco cartel was one of eight Latin American criminal organizations the U.S. government designated foreign terrorist organizations last month.

Cartels have made and released similar videos before as part of their public relations strategy. They frequently denounce their rivals and make themselves out to be the defenders of the people.

“It’s incredibly delicate, it’s an outrage that they try to stain our name,” said a member of the Jalisco Search Warriors, the group searching for missing relatives. She asked to use only her first name, Angélica, for safety.

“They’re washing their hands of something they created,” she said, referring to the video’s denials that the cartel was involved in forced recruitment or used the site for killings. “And where are the authorities? They haven’t come out to defend us or give their position.”

“No one protects us,” Angélica said. “We go out with this fear day after day … because the only thing we want to find out is where our children are.”

The search group declined to identify the criminal group that could be responsible for the camp they say was used for forced recruitment and killings in Jalisco, citing concerns for their safety. These groups, prevalent across Mexico, frequently stop short of demanding justice in their relatives’ cases and just work to find them.

The ranch in Teuchitlan, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Guadalajara, was first discovered by National Guard troops in September.

Authorities then said 10 people were arrested, two hostages were freed and a body was found wrapped in plastic. The state prosecutor’s office went in with a backhoe, dogs and devices to find inconsistencies in the ground.

But then the investigation went quiet until members of the Jalisco Search Warriors, one of dozens of search collectives that dot Mexico, visited the site earlier this month on a tip.

They found the shoes, as well as heaps of other clothing and what appeared to be burned bone fragments.

There are more than 120,000 disappeared people in Mexico, according to the government’s tally.

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