Blood, teeth and 133,000 lost souls

The Izaguirre ranch, which Mexican officials said was used as a recruitment, training and operations centre by the Jalisco cartel, in Teuchitlan, a village near Guadalajara in Jalisco state, Mexico, in this file pic from March 19, 2025. — Fred Ramos/The New York Times

MEXICO was shocked last year when ­volunteer search teams discovered an abandoned ranch filled with piles of shoes – too many to be left behind by the owners.

To many observers, it was an unmista­kable sign of a drug cartel’s extermination camp.