Mexican officials are currently facing a challenge trying to comprehend the events that occurred at a two-acre drug cartel ‘training camp,’ which has been nicknamed the ‘Mexican Auschwitz’ following unsettling photos that emerged online.

The distressing imagery from Rancho Izaguirre in Jalisco’s western region depicts numerous abandoned shoes, backpacks, shirts, and various other items, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The photographs also reveal charred bones, skulls, fingers, teeth, bullet shells, and ammunition clips from powerful firearms. Additionally, there are handwritten notes in a notebook, including numbered lists of aliases and a poignant goodbye message: ‘My dear, should I not return one day, please always remember how much I cherish you.’

Inside one cinder-block building was a shrine to Santa Muerte, a female folk saint whose cult is often associated with organized crime.

The gruesome discovery was made last week when a search group called the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco decided to act on a tip in their search for loved ones who are among the country’s more than 120,000 ‘disappeared.’

‘It was a tremendous shock,’ Raul Servin Garcia told the LA Times. ‘The first thought that occurs to you is to hope that no relative – a son, a husband, had ever been in this place, had ever been tortured or murdered there.

‘The sensation that runs through your body when you see hundreds and hundreds of shoes piled up like that is indescribable. And of course you imagine the worst.

‘You see the clothing, the shoes and you can’t control yourself,’ said Servin, who has been looking for the remains of his son, who disappeared in 2018 at the age of 20.

‘The tears come running down your eyes just thinking of the suffering that those poor people endured,’ he said. ‘One can only pray to God that your loved one was not in that place.’

It remains unclear exactly how many people were killed at the site in Teuchitlan, just 37 miles from downtown Guadalajara – Mexico’s second largest city.

But investigators now believe the ranch was used as a ‘tactical’ training area and a physical conditioning zone, along with burial lots, for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel – one of Mexico’s major and most violent crime syndicates.

Photos of one area even showed an obstacle course, crafted of wires lashed onto logs and another site with tires lining the ground. 

The group likely recruited young men from a bus station in a Guadalajara suburb. 

‘They met these young people at the bus terminal with phony promises of work,’ Servin explained. ‘Many had no idea what they were getting into.’  

Anyone who tried to escape or didn’t measure up to physical training faced death, according to Indira Navarro, the head of the searchers’ collective. 

One of the anonymous survivors even told her that prisoners were sometimes forced to kill their fellow captives, Navarro said in a radio interview.

Recruits were also forced to dig holes, then build makeshift ovens out of bricks and stones, according to the Washington Post. 

The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office says investigators have now found six groups of charred human bones, some of which were buried underground or hidden in bricks.

Forensics teams have not yet identified any of the deceased.

In an effort to match the items found at the ranch with the thousands of missing people, prosecutors released photos of almost 500 personal effects such as jeans, T-shirts, blouses, skirts, backpacks and bags.

‘We’ve received various calls from families saying “I think that T-shirt was my son’s,”‘ Servin said. ‘But we have to tell them: “Remain calm. Don’t jump to conclusions.” Because it’s very hard to think your loved one was murdered in this way or passed through such profound pain.’ 

Meanwhile, state and federal authorities are continuing to investigate, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters on Thursday.

‘We have some isolated photos, but we don’t know exactly what was found, how it was found,’ she said. 

‘We have to determine responsibilities based on the information and the investigation.’

But the federal attorney general’s office has taken the lead in the investigation, Jalisco Gov. Pablo Lemus announced Wednesday as Mexico Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero suggested there may have been collusion between the cartel and local officials.

He told reporters it was ‘not credible’ that a ‘situation of this nature wasn’t known by local authorities.’

In fact it was revealed that the National Guard entered Rancho Izaguirre last September but state officials failed to follow up aggressively with the raid.

Salvador Gonzalez de los Santos, the state attorney general, said 10 government workers combed the site at the time using backhoes and dogs.

They arrested 10 suspects who remain in custody, though it is unclear what charges they face.

Investigators also found a body wrapped in plastic and liberated two captives, among whom was reportedly the author of the love letter/last testament found in the notebook, who is now back home.

But they did not find any other bodies, with de los Santos noting that they ‘couldn’t examine the entire ranch’ because it was too big.

Yet the civilian searchers were able to find the mass graves by simply inserting metal rods into the Earth and smelling the tops to detect the stench of decomposing bodies – prompting Navarro to ask how state investigators with technology and training could have failed to find what her group did ‘with a pic, shovel and metal bar.’

The state authorities now concede that their earlier efforts were ‘insufficient’ and suffered from ‘possible omissions’ which are now under investigation.

Still, they insist there has been no criminal activity at the ranch since September. It had reportedly been active since at least 2018.