Mexico Finds Another Giant Narco Mass Grave With At Least 25 Bodies

The Los Negritos lake in Mexico, an abandoned thermal water park near the Michoacan-Jalisco border, is said to have turned into a narco cemetery.

The lakeside community's natural mud pits and hot springs have reportedly transformed into a makeshift cemetery for Jalisco cartel or Jalisco New Generation Cartel fatalities (CJNG).

According to a Monday story in the Mexican news site El Universal, around 25 remains were excavated from the Los Negritos lake in the Villamar municipality of the state of Michoacán over the previous three weeks.

Vice News, citing local reports, said the remains were discovered on June 11 at the Los Negritos natural reserve in Michoacán. Activists and families searched for lost loved ones. According to reports, the people involved in the search blocked a major highway to pressure the government to seek victims inside the park.

Activists think there may be other bodies buried in the mud pits, which El Universal now refers to as a narco cemetery. As many as 500 people could be interred there, according to activists.

Eight of the remains discovered in Mexico's Los Negritos, according to Mexican police, have already been identified, mostly through clothing and dental data.

However, 17 of the victims found as of Sunday remained unidentified because DNA testing may be the only method that may still be used to positively identify them.

Authorities are under pressure from a group of families who think the mud pits may contain the remains of missing family members.

Mexico Daily News claimed that Isis del Roco Macas Gracián allegedly found the group, called "San Pedro Cahro en Busqueda de Ángeles" or "San Pedro Cahro in search of angels."

She said kidnappers abducted her brother. Later on, officials found him dead nearby. She was from San Pedro Cahro, Michoacan.

More human remains were reportedly interred at the Los Negritos narco cemetery, some of which may have been there for seven or eight years, according to Macas Gracián.

She noted that because the location is in a geothermal zone with hazardous volcanic vents, some of the remains might not have yet been recovered. Many of the bodies, she continued, could be in the lake or the bubbling wells.

According to the Associated Press, officials found more than 50 dead in mass graves in La Barca in 2013. These burials were allegedly connected to the Jalisco cartel.

The Los Negritos region is close to the La Barca town and other municipalities, including Zamora, Jiquilpan, and Sahuayo, and a portion of it is in conflict between opposing Jalisco Cartel gangs. In a survey conducted by a Mexican NGO, Zamora was just dubbed the "world's most violent city of 2021."

Mexican drug cartels frequently dispose of the dead of their enemies or victims of kidnapping in secret burial mounds. More than 100,000 people have gone missing in Mexico so far.