Teuchitlán discovery reignites calls for justice in Jalisco’s botched missing film students case

A person holding a candle at a vigil for disappearance victims in Querétaro, Mexico. Image credit: Sipa US / Alamy.

by Madeleine Wattenbarger.

The discovery of an alleged extermination camp at the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, brought national attention to the crisis of disappearance in the state. Amidst the media storm, families have come forward to denounce the mismanagement of one of the most memorable recent disappearance cases in Jalisco: the three film students who went missing in March 2018.

Salomón Aceves Gastélum, Marco García Avalos and Daniel Díaz García disappeared after filming a school project in Tonalá, part of the Guadalajara metropolitan area. A month later, the Jalisco prosecutor’s office told the media that the young men were kidnapped by a cartel, tortured and their bodies dissolved in acid. The terrifying account sent a shock through Mexico, but seven years later, there is no evidence to support it. Seven years after the boys’ disappearance, the families are demanding that the authorities continue the investigation and look for their sons alive.

“There is no scientific data that indicates that our sons have died,” said Vicky García, Daniel’s mother. Rather, the official narrative - the “historic truth” - justified the authorities’ unwillingness to look for the boys alive.

“If the state prosecutor’s office had done its job,” García added, “perhaps our sons would be with us by now.”

The Jalisco prosecutor’s office gave the “historic truth” in a press conference without the boys’ parents present. 

The chilling narrative had an immediate effect on the students’ peers, who had organized marches and protests to demand their classmates’ return.

“When they gave that version, the majority of my students didn’t want to go out to march anymore,” said Carlos Manuel Valencia, the boys’ film professor at the moment of their disappearance. “Their parents called them and said, don’t get involved. The historic truth fulfilled its function, which was both to close the case and to demobilize everything that had been organized.”

A sham investigation

After the Jalisco prosecutor’s office fumbled the initial investigation, the FGR, under auspices of current Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, took over the case.

But an initial trial, held in April and May 2024, was rife with irregularities. The parents weren’t notified about the trial. Key pieces of evidence and witnesses were missing. The witnesses’ accounts were inconsistent, and some of the suspects alleged that their declarations - which supported the prosecutor’s version of events - were extracted under torture. As for the barrels where the boys’ bodies were supposedly dissolved in acid, forensics experts found only diesel, no traces of human remains.

It became clear, too, that the FGR hadn’t done its own investigation: save one suspect detained by the FGR, the evidence presented at trial was the same evidence that the Jalisco prosecutor gave six years prior.

The judge determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to close the case; because of lack of proof, he freed one of the suspects who allegedly dissolved the boys in acid.

Since then, though, the investigation, still in hands of federal prosecutor Gertz Manero, has stalled.

The shadow of Teuchitlán

As the Jalisco prosecutor’s office once again falls under national scrutiny for its mismanagement of the Rancho Izaguirre, its management of the missing film students provides an important antecedent. The FGR has taken over the Teuchitlán case from the Jalisco prosecutor. Gertz Manero has criticized Jalisco’s omissions, but it remains to be seen how he will steer the investigation.

The case also reveals the Jalisco authorities’ long refusal to investigate alleged recruitment camps. In 2018, before offering the story about the barrels of acid, then-Jalisco governor Aristóteles Sandoval made a casual comment to the families of Salomón, Marco and Daniel.

“He told them, ‘there’s no evidence that your sons are dead. They could be out there. We know of camps where they’re recruited and taken,’” recalled Carlos Valencia, the boys’ professor. “If they’ve known about these places since then, how did they not do anything until now when we found out about Teuchitlán?”