At the entrance to La Clementina, a housing development in the municipality of Concordia, Sinaloa, five funeral wreaths and 12 candles stand as a floral offering in memory of the miners kidnapped at the end of January. The bodies of José Ángel Hernández Vélez, Ignacio Aurelio Salazar Flores, José Manuel Castañeda Hernández, José Antonio Jiménez, and Jesús Antonio de la O, all employees of the Canadian mining company Vizsla Silver, have been identified, while the whereabouts of five others remain unknown. The bodies were found in recently discovered graves in this municipality, nearly 300 kilometers south of Culiacán, the state capital.
The offering at La Clementina covers part of the entrance to the site that served as the miners’ camp. On Friday, January 23, a group of armed men linked to the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel arrived here. The criminals abducted about ten company employees. The gunmen murdered half of the kidnapped men and left their bodies in clandestine graves located in a town called El Verde, 15 kilometers from the camp.
“These are incredibly difficult times for the families of our colleagues, for our team, and for the entire Concordia community,” said Vizsla Silver President Michael Konnert on Thursday. “We stand in solidarity with the families and are doing everything we can to support them,” the executive stated in a press release.
The Sinaloa State Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection says that authorities located the graves thanks to tips from citizens. The arrest of four members of Los Chapitos also helped in locating them; in their statements to federal authorities, they claimed they kidnapped the miners after mistaking them for a rival group. The police found the graves on February 5.
