Mexicans protest drug cartel mass grave

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — Protesters gathered across Mexico on Saturday to demand justice following a grisly discovery of charred bones, shoes and clothing at a suspected drug cartel training ground.

Demonstrations took place in the western state of Jalisco, where the remains were found, and in cities across the country, including the capital Mexico City, Tijuana, Veracruz and San Luis Potosi, according to Agence France-Presse journalists and local press reports.

Families searching for some of the more than 100,000 people missing in Mexico discovered the bodies on 5 March at a ranch where forced recruits are thought to have been held.

The Guerreros Buscadores collective — a group dedicated to locating missing people — described the site as an “extermination center” with “clandestine crematoriums,” causing shock in a country that has become inured to spiraling cartel-related violence.

In the Mexican capital, demonstrators placed candles and rows of shoes in tribute to the missing.

“I came to speak out for my son and for all the disappeared,” said Aurora Corona, 58, whose son vanished in March last year in Mexico’s northeastern Nuevo Leon state.

She hoped the discovery would pressure authorities to do more to find the 124,059 people officially registered as missing in Mexico, mostly since 2006 when the government declared war on drug cartels.