The search for 10 kidnapped mine workers who disappeared last month in the Concordia mountains in the northern state of Sinaloa has intensified considerably.
In a social media post, Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha said President Claudia Sheinbaum and Defense Minister General Ricardo Trevilla have ordered that the search-and-rescue operation be significantly reinforced.
Por instrucciones de la presidenta de México, Dra. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. (@Claudiashein), y del General Ricardo Trevilla, Secretario de Defensa Nacional (@Defensamx1), a partir de hoy, domingo 1 de febrero, se refuerza de manera importante el operativo de búsqueda de los…
— Rubén Rocha Moya (@rochamoya_) February 1, 2026
“The deployment adds 1,190 people: 800 Army personnel, 270 Special Forces, 100 National Guardsmen and 20 ministerial agents, in addition to three armed helicopters and two T6C-Texan aircraft,” he wrote on Saturday.
The 10 employees of Vizsla Silver, a Canadian mining company, went missing on Jan. 23 from a housing development near the mine’s La Concordia project located about 50 miles northeast of the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlán.
A 911 call was placed to the authorities on Jan. 24 and Vizla Silver released a statement confirming the kidnapping on Jan 28.
Vizsla Silver also announced the temporary suspension of activities at the mine and its surroundings after the disappearance of the 10 men — engineers, geologists and security personnel — at least eight of whom are Mexican nationals.
The state prosecutor’s office has offered no public statements except to say that a case file has been opened and an investigation is underway.
Relatives of the missing men have denounced the lack of information from the authorities.
Canadian mining company confirms mass kidnapping of employees in Concordia, Sinaloa
“They just tell us they haven’t heard anything, that they haven’t received any reports,” said María Salazar, the wife of missing geologist Ignacio Aurelio Salazar. “It’s been [more than a week] and we don’t know anything about our relatives; we are very worried.”
Details of last month’s kidnapping are sparse. One version reported by the media indicates that the group was kidnapped by an armed commando.
“The version they provided is that they were in their rest area at 7:30 in the morning, getting ready to go to work [when they were taken],” Salazar told journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva.
The newspaper El País reported that the criminal group likely responsible for the kidnapping is part of a cell linked to Los Chapitos, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel loyal to the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Residents of La Concordia told El País that this cell has been waging a violent campaign for more than two months in the Sierra Sur region, displacing more than 100 families since September 2024 when Los Chapitos and Los Mayitos — a rival Sinaloa Cartel faction — began warring.
With reports from El País, El Universal, La Jornada and El Financiero
