The Jalisco government has confirmed the remains of 37 people have been found among body parts left in 119 plastic bags that were buried on a property in Zapopan, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara.

Security cabinet chief Macedonio Tamez Guajardo said that forensic specialists have discovered the complete remains of nine bodies and the partial remains of 16 as well as six heads and six backs.

“It saddens me to speak in this way but society has a right to know what is happening,” Tamez said.

The official said the bodies are in “varying states of decomposition” and therefore some will be easier to identify than others. However, Tamez asserted that identification of all the victims is possible.

He said that the sex and age of the victims have not yet been determined and that authorities don’t know where they were killed or by whom.

However, Tamez added that there could be a connection between the mass grave discovered last week in the neighborhood of La Primavera and an organized crime safe house in Ciudad Granja, Zapopan, where six bodies were discovered on August 12.

While none of the remains of the 37 victims have yet been identified, family members of missing persons have begun approaching the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Science to seek information about the latest discovery, the official said.

“. . . In due course, [information] will be provided to them,” Tamez said.

He rejected a claim made by an organization of family members of missing persons that the state’s morgues are overwhelmed.

“There’s no crisis . . . no saturation [in morgues],” Tamez said, although he conceded that forensic staff face a heavy workload.

The security chief said the process to hire more forensic personnel is underway, adding that bodies are constantly being identified and returned to their families for burial.

Jalisco-based journalist Stephen Woodman said in an interview with Business Insider published on Thursday that state authorities have found 20 clandestine burial sites in the Guadalajara area this year.

In the first seven months of the year, homicides in Jalisco increased by 21% compared to the same period of 2018, and more than 3,000 people are listed as missing in the state.

The western state is the home of Mexico’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organization, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is involved in turf wars with other crime groups in several parts of the country.

Source: Milenio (sp)