The Mexico City-based team of reporter María Verza, video journalist Fernanda Pesce and photographer Marco Ugarte built trust with investigators, gaining exclusive access to a gruesome cartel “extermination site” in northern Mexico where a forensics team searches for the remains of some of Mexico’s nearly 100,000 missing people.
AP’s judges praised this all-formats effort, which might have won Best of the Week had it not been for the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine.
The story started with the AP trio traveling to a new cemetery for unidentified remains Tamaulipas state, meeting with those involved in searching for and identifying the missing. Verza asked the head of the team about some of Tamaulipas’ most notorious cartel extermination sites and he offered to give AP exclusive access to the site he found in Nuevo Laredo, a busy trade crossing on the Mexican border with Texas.
After AP secured the necessary state and national approvals, the official personally drove the journalists to the site where forensic technicians, working under armed guard for their safety, sifted through dirt, rock and bone. After six months of work at the site in Nuevo Laredo, investigators still can’t offer an estimate of how many people disappeared there. Countless bone fragments were spread across 75,000 square feet of desert scrubland, and in a single room of a ruined house, the compacted, burnt human remains and debris were nearly 2 feet deep.
Forensic technicians excavate a field on a plot of land referred to as a cartel extermination site where burned human remains are buried, on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Feb. 8, 2022. The shortage of investigations into Mexico’s nearly 100,000 disappearances is evident: There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries, not counting places like this one, where the charred remains are measured only by weight.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
A forensic technician, guarded by a National Guardsman, stands inside a ruined house where bodies were ripped apart and incinerated, on a plot of land referred to as a cartel extermination site, on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Feb. 8, 2022. Until recently, this squat, ruined house was a place where the remains of some of Mexico’s missing were obliterated.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
A technician holds a bone fragment at the forensic lab in the Tamaulipas state capital, Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, Feb. 4, 2022.
A forensic technician holds a charred jawbone found during an excavation on a plot of land referred to as a cartel extermination site where burned human remains are buried, on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Feb. 8, 2022.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Teeth recovered by forensic technicians are collected on a screen during an excavation on a plot of land referred to as a cartel extermination site, on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Feb. 8, 2022. The phenomenon of Mexico’s disappearances exploded in 2006 when the government declared war on the drug cartels. It wasn’t until 2018 that a law passed, laying the legal foundations for the government to establish the National Search Commission.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
A technician photographs a skull at the state forensic lab in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, Feb. 4, 2022. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised in 2019 that investigators would have all the resources they needed. But the national commission, which was supposed to have 352 employees this year, still has just 89.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Alejandro Lopez, part of a collective of relatives who search for disappeared persons, sifts through dirt taken from a clandestine grave in a field on the outskirts of Ciudad Mante, Mexico, Feb. 1, 2022. Most extermination sites in Mexico have been found by family members who follow up leads themselves with or without the support and protection of authorities. Such search groups exist in nearly every state.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Maria Rosario Nava pauses during an interview at the offices of the Milynali Network, a collective of families that aids in searches of disappeared relatives, during an interview in Ciudad Mante, Mexico, Feb. 2, 2022. The network will take on older cases, like that of Nava’s sister, who disappeared 10 years ago while out to buy diapers.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
An aerial view of the Forensic Pantheon on the outskirts of Ciudad Mante, Tamaulipas state, Feb. 2, 2022. The state is moving unidentified bodies from common graves to special cemeteries such as this one where the remains can be easily found if a match is made to a relative.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Graciela Perez, founder of the Milynali Network, a collective of families that aids in searches of disappeared relatives, wipes away tears during an interview in Ciudad Mante, Mexico, Feb. 1, 2022. Perez founded the group in 2012 when her daughter Milynali disappeared along with four relatives on their way home from Houston. None of them have been found, alive or dead.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Since authorities announced the discovery of the site in September 2021, no other media had been given access — AP's coverage continues to stand alone. The package illustrates the challenge Mexico faces in finding and identifying its missing, a task where human remains are often measured by weight rather than by individuals. And a companion story by the team gives voice to families of some of the disappeared.
The story played widely, and despite moving in the early days of the Ukraine invasion it scored AP’s highest reader engagement of the week. The work drew attention and compliments from the head of Mexico’s government agency overseeing the search for missing persons, and Antonio Garza, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Molly Molloy, who runs a prominent group email list devoted to the U.S.-Mexico border, wrote that it was “One of the best reports I have seen on the extraordinary numbers of ‘the disappeared’ in Mexico.”