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Police searching for clandestine crematorium in Mexico say bones found around charred pit are of “animal origin”
Trailed by search dogs and police, María de Jesús Soria Aguayo and more than a dozen volunteers walked carefully through fields of weeds and dry earth with their eyes fixed on the ground Wednesday.
On the fringes of Mexico City, the group was looking for human remains and other evidence after volunteer searchers said the site might be the location of a clandestine crematorium.
The search came after Ceci Flores, a leader of a group seeking the bodies of Mexico’s missing, announced on social media late Tuesday that her team had found bones, clandestine burial pits and ID cards around a charred pit on the southern outskirts of the city.
However, Ulises Lara, Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, disputed the claims Wednesday night, saying that officials found 14 bones and all were of “animal origin.”
“We can confirm that it is not a crematorium, nor from a clandestine grave,” he said.
Flores’ announcement on social media a day earlier had gained attention because it was the first time in recent memory that anyone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the Mexican capital.
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
If such a site were found, it could be a blow to Mexico’s governing Morena party in the runup to June 2 elections. Morena says violence in Mexico hasn’t rippled to Mexico City while it has controlled the local government.
The search Wednesday underscored the slog many Mexican families face as they seek the remains of the 110,000 people declared missing amid cartel violence.
The volunteers, like Soria Aguayo, are mostly the mothers of the disappeared. They have formed their own independent groups to search in violence-torn swaths of Mexico.
The “madres buscadoras” — “searching mothers” — usually aren’t trying to convict anyone of their relatives’ disappearances. They say they just want to find their remains. Many families say not having definite knowledge of a relative’s fate is worse than it would be to know a loved one was dead.
“I started my own search alone, tracking with my own hands and searching alone in the countryside,” said Soria Aguayo, 54, whose son’s remains were recovered in Veracruz state in 2022. “My promise to these women is to continue searching until we can’t any more … because there’s still many (bodies) we haven’t found.”
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
The Mexican government has spent little looking for the missing, so the volunteers conduct their own hunts for clandestine graves where cartels hide their victims.
If the volunteers find something, the most authorities will do is send a police and forensics team to retrieve remains, which in most cases are never identified. The government also hasn’t adequately funded or implemented a genetic database to help identify remains.
The searches increasingly have deadly consequences. At least seven of the activists searching for some of Mexico’s missing have been slain since 2021.
Volunteer groups have been angered by a government campaign to “find” missing people by checking their last known address, to see if they have returned home without advising authorities. Activists say it is just an attempt to reduce the politically embarrassing figures on the missing.
In discussing some of the evidence found earlier at the site, Lara, the Mexico City chief prosecutor, said Wednesday morning that police went to the addresses listed on the ID cards recovered and “found that both of the people to whom those cards belonged are alive and in good health.”
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
Lara said one of them, a woman, told officers that her ID card and cellphone were stolen about a year ago, when thieves snatched them from her while she was stuck in traffic. While that ruled out the possibility the woman’s body could have been dumped there, it suggested criminals had used the site to dispose of evidence. In the wooded and rural fringes of Mexico City, it is not unheard of for criminals to dump the bodies of kidnapping victims.
After hours of searching through fields on the rural outskirts of the Mexican capital, volunteers came up with little other than frustration.
While some in the group cast doubt that they would find any bodies, Flores said they planned to press on in their search, adding they had already spent two days searching the area following an anonymous tip. Volunteers like Flores often conduct investigations based on tips from former criminals.
“If they don’t search, they’re never going to find anything,” Flores said.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
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Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
In their final meeting, China’s leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Biden that his nation was “ready to work with a new administration,” as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over.
The two leaders gathered Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Mr. Biden was expected to urge Xi to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. It marked their first in-person meeting since they met in Northern California last November.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Xi appeared to signal his concern that the incoming president’s protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail could send the U.S.-China relationship into another valley.
“China is ready to work with a new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples,” Xi said through an interpreter.
LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spoke in broader brushstrokes about where the relationship has gone and reflected not just on the past four years, but on their long relationship.
“Over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have experienced ups and downs, but with the two of us at the helm, we have also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation, and generally achieved stability,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Xi, with top aides surrounding them, gathered around a long rectangle of tables in an expansive conference room at Lima’s Defines Hotel and Conference Center.
There’s much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned promising to levy 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
Bobby Djavaheri, president of Los Angeles-based Yedi Houseware Appliances — which manufactures its products in China — told CBS News in an interview this week that such tariffs “would decimate our business, but not only our business. It would decimate all small businesses that rely on importing.”
Trump has also proposed revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, phasing out all imports of essential goods from China and banning China from buying U.S. farmland.
Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most significant foreign policy challenge they will face.
It’s a big moment for Mr. Biden as he wraps up more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most consequential on the international stage and put much effort into cultivating that relationship.
Mr. Biden and Xi first got to know each other on travels across the U.S. and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both have said left a lasting impression.
“For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between. And I think we’ve spent a long time dealing with these issues,” Mr. Biden said Saturday.
But the last four years have presented a steady stream of difficult moments.
The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks. The initial findings have revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.
U.S. intelligence officials also have assessed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine.
And tensions flared last year after Mr. Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, to serve as energy secretary in his upcoming, second administration.
CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Wright is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.
Trump also said in a statement Saturday that Wright will serve on the newly-created National Energy Council, which will be chaired by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s selection for secretary of the Interior.
Burgum will oversee a panel that crosses all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, Trump said in a previous statement.
Wright has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.
Wright also has criticized what he calls a “top-down” approach to climate by liberal and left-wing groups and said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.”
Consideration of Wright to head the administration’s energy department won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm.
Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term.
Hamm helped organize an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April where Trump reportedly asked industry leaders and lobbyists to donate $1 billion to Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that Trump would curtail environmental regulations if re-elected.
The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. The agency is in charge of maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons, oversees 17 national research laboratories and approves natural gas exports, as well as ensuring environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. It also promotes scientific and technological research.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Trump promised bold choices for his Cabinet, and Wright’s nomination delivers.
“He’s s an energy innovator who laid the foundation for America’s fracking boom. After four years of America last energy policy, our country is desperate for a secretary (of energy) who understands how important American energy is to our economy and our national security,″ Barrasso said of Wright, adding: “Wright will help ensure America remains committed to an all-of-the-above energy policy that puts American families first.”
Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative group that supports fossil fuels, said Wright would be “an excellent choice” for Energy secretary. Pyle led Trump’s Energy Department’s transition team in 2016.
Liberty is a major energy industry service provider, with a focus on technology. Wright, who grew up in Colorado, earned undergraduate degree at MIT and did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley and MIT. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which helped launch commercial shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before founding Liberty Resources in 2010.