Mother and son who helped expose ‘extermination camp’ killed in Jalisco, Mexico

CNN
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Two Mexican activists who publicized a grisly “extermination camp” linked to organized crime were killed on Thursday in Jalisco, according to Mexican authorities.

The victims are María del Carmen Morales and her son Jaime Daniel Ramírez Morales, both activists for the rights of missing people in Mexico.

Morales is part of the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, a group dedicated to finding missing people. Morales’s son, Ernesto Julián Ramírez Morales, disappeared on February 24, 2024, in Las Villas de Tlajomulco, Jalisco according to the Warrior Searchers.

In March, her group announced the discovery of the Izaguirre ranch – a site with secret crematoriums and buried human remains, believed to have been a criminal group’s center of operations. The group labeled it an “extermination camp,” where criminals lured prospective recruits and held them against their will, though Mexican authorities have not used that term when discussing the property.

The state’s prosecutors office told CNN that there is no evidence that links the murder to the Morales’ activism.

“But that does not mean that it is not being investigated, all avenues must be exhausted”, said Denis Rodríguez, spokesperson for the Jalisco Attorney’s Office.

At her morning briefing on Friday, President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the Mexican Undersecretary for Human Rights would reach out to the Morales family to offer them assistance and called for further investigation.

“This must be thoroughly investigated,” Sheinbaum said. “There can be no conclusion like ‘it had nothing to do with [Morales’s] work.’ It must be thoroughly investigated.”

This is the second case in less than a month of people seeking justice for the disappearance of family members being killed in Jalisco.

Teresa González died on April 2nd after six days in a hospital following a gun attack. According to the group Luz de Esperanza Desaparecidos Jalisco, which participated in the investigations at the Izaguirre ranch, González was attacked with a firearm during an attempted kidnapping.

González was searching for her brother, who disappeared in February 2024 in Guadalajara, the second-largest city in Mexico and one of the areas where most people have disappeared in recent years in the country.

CNN’s Ivonne Valdés contributed reporting.