MEXICO CITY — It has become a kind of rallying cry: Teuchitlán, the township in the western state of Jalisco where searchers made a macabre discovery — a ranch of horrors featuring makeshift crematoria and hundreds of abandoned shoes, backpacks, T-shirts and other personal effects.

News reports proclaimed it the “Mexican Auschwitz,” an apparent cartel killing ground.

Now “Teuchitlán” blares from protest banners, headlines and street graffiti, shorthand for a pervasive sense of deception and unease.

Police have arrested an alleged cartel recruiter named as the ringleader of the site and also jailed the mayor of Teuchitlán. Even so, activists for the missing accuse the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum — who vowed to uncover “the truth” — of a cover-up.

“We all feel betrayed,” said Raúl Servín, one of the first searchers at the scene.

Authorities now insist the ranch was never a place of extermination or the large-scale disposal of bodies, but rather served as a cartel training grounds — apparently one of many such clandestine sites scattered across Mexico, providing recruits for an industry that is among the nation’s most prolific employers.

But much is still unexplained: What about the charred bones found on the ranch grounds?

And what are the fates of the hundreds of cartel trainees who apparently passed through the facility? Are they still alive?

And how did state and federal authorities fail to follow up on a raid on the site last year, leaving the ranch little known until civilian searchers happened upon it?

In a country where the ranks of the “disappeared” have soared past 120,000 — most believed to be victims of organized crime — the mystery has raised deep suspicions and sparked conspiracy theories, sentiments all captured in one word: Teuchitlán.

Jalisco is emblematic of a kind of essential Mexicanityhome to cultural markers such as tequila, mariachi and ranchera music, along with signature gastronomic dishes. The state capital, Guadalajara, is Mexico’s second city, and Puerto Vallarta is among the nation’s landmark coastal resorts.

But the state is also the stomping grounds of one of Mexico’s most notorious organized crime syndicates, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which runs narcotics trafficking, migrant-smuggling, extortion and other rackets — even a sophisticated, time-share fraud that targeted foreign investors looking for beach properties.

In March, a series of tips and rumors led activists to the isolated site known as Rancho Izaguirre, on the outskirts of Teuchitlán, an agricultural town of some 10,000 residents less than 35 miles outside Guadalajara.

Such search groups, or collectives — typically founded by mothers and other relatives of the disappeared — have proliferated throughout Mexico as people despair of official inaction. The searchers have become key actors in civil society, seeking out clandestine graves and putting pressure on the government to find the missing.

Mexican organized crime and confederates in local governments and police forces aren’t happy about bothersome civilians shedding light on their activities. More than two dozen searchers have been slain in recent years, according to Mexican human rights groups.

Relatives of the missing and search groups scour Rancho Izaguirre for evidence that their relatives were there.

(Ian Robles / Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Activists from a group known as the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco were out seeking remains when they arrived at Rancho Izaguirre. They found what they described as crude crematoria and charred bones — the basis for the “Mexican Auschwitz” narrative that went viral once the searchers posted photos of their grisly finds, including what appeared to be crude cremation pits.

But what really struck a collective chord were the images of abandoned shoes, backpacks, T-shirts, jeans and other personal effects. There were L.A. Dodgers caps, basketball jerseys featuring logos of the Chicago Bulls and other teams, a Stars-and-Stripes blanket and various items emblazoned with Disney characters.

The Jalisco prosecutor’s office, which was accused of botching an investigation into the ranch last year after state and federal authorities raided the site and shut it down, took the extraordinary step of photographing the discarded possessions and posting the individual images on its website. As of Friday, prosecutors had uploaded photos of 1,844 items.

What stood out most, however, were the scores of shoes, which came to symbolize the fate of Mexico’s vanished multitudes.

Items seized at Rancho Izaguirre in March and April. The ranch had been a cartel training site, Mexican federal officials said.

( Jalisco state attorney general’s office)

People from throughout Mexico scoured — and continue to scour — the prosecutor’s site in desperate efforts to find any clues. Individuals inundated social media with comments saying they recognized a missing loved one’s sneakers, T-shirt, backpack or some other item — even as officials counseled against high expectations, noting that many of the items were commonplace.

“With all the pain in my heart, I hope that my son was there and we can rest after this torment of five years,” a woman told Imagen Televisión, explaining that relatives recognized pants, a shirt and a backpack that resembled those belonging to her son, a pharmacy worker who disappeared five years earlier. “I’m not looking for whoever was guilty. … I just want to find out if my son was really there.”

Some even made pilgrimages to the isolated ranch, hovering outside yellow and red police tape cordoning off the site.

“I feel that my son was here,” María Luz Ruiz said. Her son, a tequila industry worker, was kidnapped 12 years ago and never heard from again.

Another visitor, Paula Avila, said she experienced “a sense of foreboding” when visiting.

“I felt a pain in my chest,” said Avila, whose son, an Uber driver, disappeared three years ago.

Among the most provocative elements of the Teuchitlán narrative are the conflicting reports about human remains.

After word of the ranch hit the news in March, Jalisco state prosecutors said investigators had discovered six groups of charred human bones, some hidden beneath earth and bricks.

But federal authorities were quick to deny the most sensational report: that the ranch had been the site of mass executions and the cremation of remains. Recruits may have been killed or tortured there, especially those who attempted to escape, Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s security chief, told reporters. But there was no evidence or mass murder or large-scale disposal of remains, he said.

“It’s a totally distinct thing to say it’s a place where some kind of homicide or torture took place — and to say it’s an extermination camp,” García Harfuch said. “An extermination camp is a place where hundreds or thousands of people are killed in a systematic manner.”

Relatives of the missing and search groups during their tour of Rancho Izaguirre.

(Ian Robles / Future Publishing via Getty Images)

There was “not a shred of proof” that corpses were burned at the site, Mexico’s attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, told reporters.

Contradicting Gertz Manero was the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco group, which said it had found “irrefutable evidence” of human remains, including skull, femur, hip and dental fragments.

“We found those crematoria, we found those bones,” Servín said. “One feels a great sense of impotence.”

The site, authorities said, had operated as a training and operations hub for the Jalisco cartel, possibly since 2021, until it was shut down last year when state authorities and federal National Guard troops raided the ranch.

Many recruits had apparently been tricked into coming to the site, authorities said, fooled by social media advertisements offering well-paying work in the security field. Others, though, may have enlisted willingly and completed their one-month training — including physical drills and instruction in firearms — and went on to become cartel operatives.

The ranch discoveries prompted authorities to shut down dozens of online cartel recruitment sites, García Harfuch said.

And the mounds of clothing, shoes and other effects? García Harfuch responded that, once at the ranch, recruits were issued uniforms and tactical boots and forced to relinquish their garb and cellphones. They remained incommunicado.

Authorities say the investigation continues. This month federal troops arrested José Asunción Murguía, the mayor of Teuchitlán, and accused him of being on the payroll of the Jalisco cartel and being involved in the Rancho Izaguirre operation.

The mayor was seen at the ranch on various occasions and was an accomplice of several cartel lieutenants, authorities allege. The lieutenants include José Gregorio Hermida, alias “Comandante Lastra,” whom authorities have called a regional recruiter for the Jalisco cartel and a boss of the ranch operation.

According to Mexican authorities, Hermida is also the “mastermind” behind the July disappearance of a pair of 18-year-old cousins — students at the University of Guadalajara — who were victims of a recruitment scheme. Prosecutors say Comandante Lastra — who was arrested March 20 outside Mexico City — reported to Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytán, known as “The Toad,” a high-level cartel capo.

The uploaded images from the ranch certainly raised the hopes of many people desperate to learn what happened to their missing loved ones. But the identification process has dragged on, dashing expectations.

For Gerardo Díaz, a farmer in Jalisco, the entire drama of Teuchitlán has evoked a soul-crushing whirlwind of emotions.

The published images of clothing presented a promising possibility: That the family could finally clarify the fate of his brother, José Díaz, who disappeared in 2021 in the city of Tonalá, outside Guadalajara. A white-and-gray Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt on the prosecutor’s website appeared to match one that his brother, then 23, was wearing when he vanished.

The family went to the prosecutor’s office, Díaz said, and offered to give DNA samples to match against any DNA found on the T-shirt. They were told to be patient; this was going to be “a long process.” More than two months later, the family has heard nothing.

“For me, this whole process has been a joke,” Díaz said. “They are laughing at people’s pain. They have no empathy for families like ours living with so much anguish. It’s a true hell. We are tired of authorities who don’t do anything — while the agony of the disappearance of my brother continues to consume our lives.”

McDonnell is a Times staff writer and Sánchez Vidal a special correspondent. Special correspondent Liliana Nieto del Río contributed to this report.