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So, these are the scenes that the government does want you to see. Tens of thousands of football supporters pouring into the centre of Mexico City. Meanwhile, there's a tragedy unfolding across the country. Over 130,000 people are missing as Mexico battles drug cartels.
There's this cat and mouse game going on between activists who want these faces to be seen and government officials who want to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. And the families of those who have disappeared are often the only ones looking for them. No one here is truly safe from cartel violence.
With all eyes now on the World Cup, this is the crisis Mexico doesn't want you to see. In May 2021, CCTV captured the moment Hector Flores' son Danny was seized by police. Then he disappeared. When was the last time you spoke to him? Hector believes his son was then handed over to a cartel and forced to work for them.
Is it true that the government, the police have been taking these down? This city (Guadalajara) and this state (Jalisco) are right at the epicentre of Mexico's drug conflict. The home of the most feared and most powerful drug cartel in the country. The whole state erupted into violence back in February after El Mencho, the boss of Jalisco New Generation Cartel, was killed by security forces during a raid on his hideout.
His foot soldiers responded by setting fire to cars, homes, and businesses. I visited the site not far from here in Guadalajara, just days after El Mencho was shot dead. This place, wow, it's a smoke in my eyes. God. This place was basically a warzone just a few days ago. It's organised crime groups like these that are driving the disappearances. The authorises here now are absolutely desperate to make sure that during some of the biggest World Cup games here, absolutely nothing goes wrong.
We're driving west out of Guadalajara with Hector and his activists and they are about to begin a search in a region of really spectacular, very steep mountains and his team think that bodies may have been disposed of, literally thrown off the mountain sides here and they are going to repel down these ravines to try and find the victims. Two weeks ago, this group uncovered the skeleton of a woman and the jawbone of another person down here.
So, that's the female victim. It's relatives of the missing who have learned how to abseil to be able to search cliffs like these. Security forces are here, too, but not to help search for the missing. They're here in case the cartels attack.
The teams are all down there now picking their way across this horrible scree slope of just garbage. And one of the reasons they think why organised crime is using this place, it's not just because it's very remote and it's easy to do thing's in the middle of the night when no one's looking, but it's because there are coyotes and wolves and other animals here. And once you've thrown the victim down there, those animals will do the rest of the work for them. A sudden burst of radio chatter is coming from the families down below. And I think probably they found something down there and they're sending more people down to try and find out what it is. As Hector and the others come back up exhausted,
they tell us that they found a few small bones, including a vertebrae, which will now be sent off for forensic testing to confirm if they are human remains. Hector and his wife, Theresa, have invited me to the home to hear a little bit more about their son and his disappearance and what they think might have happened to him. Hector and Theresa believe their son was targeted, because of his degree in forestry and his ability to fly drones. Useful skills for the cartels who have a monopoly over many rural areas.
It feels like forced recruitment by cartels is a growing crisis here and it's largely young men being affected. I'm heading deeper into cartel territory to find out more. And if these police weren't here, would you be able to be here now? No. Indira Navarro is leading another search. They've just received a tip off that this could be a mass grave site used by the cartels.
In five minutes that we've been here, they found a few bones and I think they're pretty convinced that they're going to find a body or more bodies down there. Just last year, Indira made another gruesome discovery. Rancho Izaguirre is a site suspected of being used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as a forced recruitment and extermination camp. How did you feel being in that place?
Wow, what's that? Indira has said that they want me to see what it's like, to put myself in their shoes. To see what they do every weekend. So, they've asked me to get in this hole and to try and dig. With the world's attention on Mexico, the families are heading to the capital. It's their one chance to force the government to take them seriously.
How are you feeling about the protest? They're right to be nervous. Search groups from across Mexico are joining forces at tonight's protest, at the Azteca football stadium. But we've heard that government forces are blocking some from even entering the city. The families have made it into the city, but they want to get to the stadium. The march has now set off and they're shouting, 'Mexico, Mexico, the champion in disappearances.'
They want the government to do something, anything to find their kids and bring them home. A government official has turned up, but the protesters don't like what he has to say. The police have completely blocked the road leading to the stadium here. And so Hector and some of the others have decided that they're going to march in the other direction and try and find a way of sneaking around to get to the stadium another way. They are absolutely determined to get there.
The police didn't let us go over there. They block, so we block here too. The drivers are now getting really angry that they can't get through. The road has been completely blocked. The activists here are shouting back: 'If it was your kid, you would do the same thing.' I spent this week with these people in Jalisco digging into the ground for their children and they are desperate.
The families are now in a standoff with riot police. Their route has been blocked again. For the families of the missing, this is not just a wall of police, but a symbol for how this crisis is being ignored once again.
