How pigs could contribute to finding missing Mexican drug cartel victims

Researchers in Mexico are starting an unusual method to locate the thousands of people who have disappeared from decades of drug cartel power in decades of decades of decades.

These animals serve as deputies for human remains and are subjected to various simulated disposal methods.

Scientists dress the dead pig in clothes, wrap them into the packing tape or even dismember them.

Some are filled in plastic bags, others wrapped in ceilings, covered with lime or burned.

They are then buried individually or in groups, since the researchers meticulously observe the decomposition process.

This research aims to deal with the amazing number of disappearance, with a crisis often leaving families to look for loved ones with minimal official support.

Government scientists now integrate these pig studies with state-of-the-art satellite, geophysical and biological mapping techniques.

The hope is that these combined efforts provide decisive information, which ultimately leads to the discovery of some of the missing bodies.

130,000 missing and count

The ranks of the missing Mexico exploded in the years after the start of the then President Felipe Calderón’s war against drug cartels in 2006. A strategy that spoke to the leaders of a handful of powerful cartels led to a splitter organized crime and the multiplication of violence to control the territory.

With almost complete impunity, the cartels found out due to the complicity or inactivity of the authorities that it was better that everyone from whom he believes that he disappears in the way is in the way to leave as a body on the street. The Mexican administrations were sometimes not ready to recognize the problem, and at other times by the extent of violence they staggered that their judicial system is not prepared.

Mexicos disappeared could populate a small city. Official data in 2013 missed 26,000, but the number now exceeds 130,000 – more than any other Latin American nation. The United Nations stated that there are signs that the disappearance is “generalized or systematic”.

If the missing people are found dead or alive, it usually becomes loved ones. Guided by information from witnesses, parents and siblings are looking for graves by walking through the cartel area, pluning a metal rod into the ground and sniffing after the scent of death.

Around 6,000 secret graves have been found since 2007, and new discoveries are constantly being made. Tens of thousands of remains still have to be identified.

Test creative solutions

In Jalisco, in which the Jalalco New Generation Cartel is located, the largest number of people who have been missing in Mexico has: 15,500. In March, human bone fragments and hundreds of clothing were discovered on a cartel ranch in the state. The authorities contested that it was the place of a mass grave.

José Luis Silván, coordinator of the mapping project and scientist at Centrogeo, a Federal Research Institute that focuses on geospacial information, said Jalisco has disappeared, “Why we are here”.

The mapping project introduced in 2023 is a collaboration between the Guadalajara University, the national autonomous university of the Mexican Autonomous and the University of Oxford in England as well as the Jalalco Search Commission, a state agency that organizes local searches with relatives.

“No other country is so strong to test and combine new techniques, said Derek, congratulations, a Canadian forensic anthropologist, whose expertise in geographical information systems inspired the Mexican project.

Nevertheless, congratulations warn, technology “is not a panacea”.

“Ninety percent of the search is solved with a good witness and ditch,” he said.

Plants, insects and decomposing pigs

Silván passes a place where scientists buried 14 pigs about two years ago. He says that you may not know how well the technology works, where and when it can be used for at least three years or under what conditions.

“Flowers appeared on the surface because of the phosphorus, we didn’t see that last year,” he said when he took measurements on one of the tomb. “The mothers who are looking for say that this little yellow flower always blooms over the graves and use them as a guide.”

Pigs and humans are closely related and are known to share around 98 percent of the DNA. However, the physical similarities are also important for the mapping project. According to the US National National Library of Medicine, pigs resemble people in size, fat distribution as well as the structure and thickness of the skin.

A large Colombian drone, which is mounted with a hyper -spectral camera, flies over the pig’s grave. In the general of mining companies, the camera will measure the light that is reflected by substances in the soil, including nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and shows how they differ, how the pigs break up. The colorful picture that it creates offers indications of what to search for graves.

“This is not a pure science,” said Silván. “It is science and action. Everything that has been learned must be used immediately instead of waiting for it to mature because there is urgency.”

The researchers also use thermal monks, laser scanners and other devices to register anomalies, underground movements and electrical currents. A set of graves is enclosed behind a slice of transparent acrylic and offers scientists a window to observe the decomposition of the pigs in real time.

The Jalalco Commission compares and analyzes flying, beetles, plants and soil that were obtained from the human and pork trenches.

Every grave is a lively “Micro ecosystem,” said Tunuari Chávez, the director of the Commission’s context analysis.

Science to serve society

Silván and his colleagues were triggered by the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 and began to collect information about ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistance and satellite images from all over the world. They studied research results from the University of Tennessee about human bodies that were buried on a “body farm”. They viewed grave mapping techniques used in the Balkans, Colombia and Ukraine.

“What is the use of science or technology if you don’t solve any problems?” he said.

They learned new applications of satellite analysis, then began their first experiments, buried the pigs and examined the substances that use criminals to dispose of bodies. They found that lime can be easily detected, but it is not hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid and burned meat.

The Chávez team worked to combine science with what they knew about how the cartels worked. For example, they found that the disappearance in Jalalco often took place along the cartel paths between Pacific ports, drug manufacturing facilities and the US border and that most of the missing congregation were found in which they have disappeared.

Experts relatives

The experience of the families of the missing also provides information on research.

Some observed that graves are often found under trees whose roots grow vertically, so that those who dig the graves can remain in the shade. Most of the researchers who were invited to visit one of the pig tribes were able to identify most of the non -marked graves because of plants and ground placement, said Silván.

“Knowledge flows in both directions,” he said.

Maribel Cedeño, who has been looking for her missing brother for four years, said she believes that the drones and other technologies will be helpful.

“I have never imagined being in this situation, finding body and becoming such an expert,” she said of her search.

Héctor Flores has been looking for his son since 2021. He asks why so much time and effort were invested in methods that did not lead to concrete discoveries if the families have proven with little official support.

Although research has not yet been completed, the Jalalco Search Commission is already using a thermal roar, a laser scanner and a multi -spectral camera to help families in some cases to look for their missing relatives. However, it is unclear whether the authorities all over Mexico will ever be willing to use or afford the high-tech helpers.

Congratulations, the forensic scientist, said researchers are aware of the limits of technology, but “they always have to try to fail and continue to try again.”