Human remains found in 45 sacks thrown into a ravine in the western Mexican state of Jalisco belonged to eight young men and women missing, local authorities confirmed on Tuesday.

Last week, in the community of Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco, authorities searching for eight missing call center employees announced they had found human remains at the bottom of a 40-meter ravine.

“Evidence (…) confirms that these are young people who worked at a call center in Zapopan and were reported missing,” the Jalisco state government said in a press release, citing forensic reports.

According to their families, the victims, two women and six men in their thirties, were last seen alive between 20 and 22 May.

The place where they worked is not far from where the human remains were found.

The federal government, based on initial findings from the investigation, said the call center was involved in illegal activities, specifically real estate fraud.

According to official figures, the state of Jalisco has the highest number of disappearances in all of Mexico: more than 15,000 since 1962 out of 110,771 throughout the territory.

In 2021, about 70 bags containing the remains of 11 people were found in Tonal, near Guadalajara.

Security experts say these numbers are largely due to wars between cartels, including the New Generation Jalisco gang, for control of the drug market.

More than 340,000 murders have been committed in Mexico, most of which the authorities attribute to gangs, since the so-called “war on drugs”, a controversial operation by the authorities against the cartels and the deployment of the military inside the country, began in December 2006.

Source: RES-IPE