New details have come to light about the atrocities committed by members of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) at the Izaguirre Ranch, a property located in a rural community Jalisco that was used by the criminal group as a confinement, training and extermination center.
The property, located in the municipality of Teuchitlán, was allegedly used for more than 10 years by criminal groups to train people to serve as hitmen for the cartel. On March 10, Indira Navarro, the leader of Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco, the private nonprofit group that alerted Mexican authorities of burnt human remains hidden underground, said she received an anonymous call from a woman who said she had been held against her will at the property for three years.
Just a couple of days later, Mexican news outlet Milenio collected three more testimonies from people that were held against their will there.
Survivors said there were places across the property designated for specific purposes, including an obstacle course, a shooting range and a place referred by cartel members as "the butcher shop," where prisoners were forced to dismember human bodies.
One man that was held captive for two weeks at the Teuchitlán property told Milenio that new people would arrive each day and that were was a designated space meant for torturing those who would oppose to any requests from cartel members.
"They tortured us every day just to instill fear. The first thing they did once you arrived to the ranch —after taking away your clothes— was to beat you up with wooden planks," the man said.
According to the testimony of another man, the shooting range and obstacle course were meant to train prisoners. "Those were used once they taught you how to use an AK-47 rifle," he said, adding that before moving on to real firearms they made prisoners practice with paintball guns.
"Once you moved on to real guns there was no excuse to say no. If they sent you to get toilet paper or asked you to torture your partner you had to do it. There were no second chances given," the man recounted.
Those who opposed orders or simply tried to escape from the ranch were killed on the spot according to the witnesses. "They would let you run, but once you started climbing the fence that's when they would shoot you," he added.
Perhaps the most shocking revelations from the survivors came when describing the place known as "the butcher shop," located at the far end of the property. There, prisoners were tasked to dismember bodies.
"They didn't teach us how to do it, so it was up to each person. There is not a day in which I do not think of it and there is not a day in which I am not tormented by it," another one of the survivors said. "I couldn't even sleep but, at that moment, I had to do it in order to survive."
As new details about the Izaguirre ranch continue to be revealed, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the attorney general's office would take on the case to find those responsible for the atrocities.
"The first thing we have to do in that case is investigate, because the images are obviously painful, we really need to know what happened there before anything else," Sheinbaum said to members of the press during her March 12 news conference. "That's why it's important that there is a coordinated investigation, and obviously determining who is responsible."
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