In the community of El Verde, Sinaloa, a clandestine grave was located. According to reports given to searchers by authorities, seven bodies were found at the site on the night of February 7.
🔹The Sabuesos Guerreras collective reported that they are monitoring the exhumation and forensic examinations from a distance due to the risks on the roads, the distance, and the lack of support for transporting the families.
🔹Sources from the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that one of the bodies recovered from the grave belongs to José Ángel Hernández Vélez, one of the 10 mine workers abducted on January 23 while traveling from the camp to their shift at a Vizsla Silver Corp. mine.
🔹The case exposes the failure of the Mexican state, at all three levels, to pacify a region marked by internal paramilitary warfare between factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. The conflict, which dates back to mid-2014 when Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was abducted from a meeting to be handed over to U.S. authorities, has radically transformed civilian life in the state.
🔹The kidnapping of the Vizsla Silver Corp. workers is yet another facet of the regime of violence in Sinaloa. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo stated that several people have been arrested in connection with the miners’ abduction and that, according to her, the detainees themselves provided information that led to the discovery of the mass grave near El Verde.
🔹Vizsla Silver reported that it was notified by the families of kidnapped workers from the Pánuco project that their relatives had been found dead. The company stated that the incident is under investigation and that the available information remains limited, pending official confirmation from Mexican authorities.
🔹 🔹The leader of Sabuesos Guerreras (Warrior Bloodhounds), María Isabel Cruz Bernal, explained that they initially tried to go to the site, but upon observing that their colleagues in Mazatlán were being denied access and information, they opted for a communication channel with the National Search Commission and prosecutors’ offices to follow up on the forensic process.
🔹The collective pointed out that, even given the magnitude of the discovery, the families “are traveling on their own” because they are not receiving support for legal proceedings, and that the risk on the highway and the distance were determining factors in their decision not to travel to the southern part of the state.
🔹The first news about the identification of José Ángel Hernández Vélez was disseminated by Sabuesos Guerreras, based on information from people who were keeping watch at the property where the grave is located, which was being guarded by the National Guard.
🔹According to El Financiero, three bodies had already been identified: José Ángel Hernández Vélez (37 years old), José Manuel Castañeda Hernández (43 years old), and Ignacio Aurelio Salazar. The identifications were based on family confirmations and features such as tattoos, while forensic protocols continued.
🔹The FGR’s (Attorney General’s Office) investigations had been underway since Thursday, February 6, and the proceedings led to the recovery of ten bodies from the clandestine grave, located 85 km from Mazatlán and 285 km from Culiacán.
🔹The newspaper Noroeste documented that the company itself had already ordered a temporary halt to fieldwork at the Pánuco project on April 4, 2025, citing “current security conditions,” and that it later announced the resumption of activities on May 5, arguing that conditions had normalized.
🔹In that same report, Noroeste pointed out that information from the State Welfare Secretariat placed this municipality as the one with the highest displacement in 2025 and described journalistic reports of violence in the mountainous area since January 2025, with episodes that included clashes, fires and the use of explosives with drones.
Source: codigomagenta
