A still burning clandestine grave containing human remains was found by a citizens’ search brigade on Wednesday in Guaymas, Sonora.

The Madres Buscadoras, or Searching Mothers of Sonora, is a group of around 200 people that have taken up the search for the missing victims of drug cartels in the absence of official efforts. They revealed the find at a makeshift garbage dump the community of San José through a live transmission on Facebook.

A dozen graves and more than 30 bodies have been found in the area since 2018.

In the transmission, members of the group showed the improvised crematorium where smoke was rising. They believe that the pit, more than one meter deep, was built by a criminal organization to dispose of its victims.

The group’s founder, Cecilia Flores Armenta, told media at the scene that the search party was guided there by the smell of “burning fat.”

An estimated 85,006 people have disappeared since 2006, according to the federal government. Seventy-six percent of cases are concentrated in Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nuevo León, Sonora, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Zacatecas.

From 2018 to March 2021, 1,606 clandestine graves with 2,736 bodies were found; 38% of the bodies were identified and 23% returned to the relatives of the victims.

Source: Sin Embargo (sp)