The discovery of human remains in the state of Sinaloa during a search by Mexican forces for 10 kidnapped employees of a Canadian mining firm highlights the “terror” the country faces, a relative of one of the missing says.
The Attorney General’s Office of Mexico issued a statement Friday evening saying authorities believed they had found the body of one of the abducted employees of Vizsla Silver Corp. among the dead uncovered near a rural village called El Verde.
The statement said the body matched the “characteristics” of one of the missing 10, but more work was needed to confirm the identity. It did not mention the number of bodies found.
“It’s horrible what is happening in Mexico,” said the family member, who CBC News agreed not to name due to fears for their safety.
“So many people disappeared, so many people dead, so much impunity.”
El Verde sits about 15 kilometres north of Concordia, the municipality where armed men kidnapped the 10 employees of the Vancouver-based mining company on the morning of Jan. 23. Concordia is about 50 kilometres east of the coastal tourist city of Mazatlán.
The Mexican government launched a major operation involving over a thousand troops, including special forces, to find the abducted employees.
Missing persons reports have been filed for six of the men: Ignacio Aurelio Salazar Flores, 40; José Manuel Castañeda Hernández, 43; José Antonio Jiménez Nevarez, 34; Saul Alberto Ochoa Pérez, 39; José Ángel Hernández Vélez, 37; and Francisco Antonio Esparza Yáñez, 67. Their occupations range from engineer and geologist to security guard.
The kidnapping of the employees unfolded amid a surge in violence across Sinaloa driven by the 18-month civil war within the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most powerful drug-trafficking groups in the world, that has left thousands dead and missing across the state.
A top Mexican official said recently that the employees were kidnapped by one of the warring cartel factions. It remains unclear why Vizsla Silver’s employees were targeted.
At least one other person, Pablo Osorio Sánchez, 26, from Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, an engineer for an unrelated construction company, was also kidnapped around the same time.
“All of us are not doing well emotionally,” said the family member, who was asked to speak on behalf of a group of the missing employee’s relatives.
No support, relatives say
The family member said they have received very little information over the past three weeks from Mexican authorities and Vizsla Silver about the search.
“We haven’t received any support from the government or from the company,” said the family member.
Vizsla Silver said in an emailed statement to CBC News that its “priority is, and always has been, the safety of our people.”
It said that the company is in contact with “the Mexican authorities leading the investigation” and with the families of the employees.
“We are offering support and assistance as appropriate during this extremely difficult time,” the statement said.
Families are still trying to get clarity on what happened the morning when armed men took the employees, said the relative.
Initially, families were told the employees were taken by a group of armed men from one of the company’s camps. They were then told the employees were taken from a company-rented facility in a gated neighbourhood in Concordia called La Clementina between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., said the family member.
“There must have been surveillance cameras,” they said.
Vizsla Silver has faced several security-related situations over the past five months, including over three days in early January when employees were told to work from their residences, said the family member. The same thing occurred in October and September, they said.
The company was also forced to pause operations in April 2025 over security concerns, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Vizsla Silver is currently developing a silver and gold mining project called Panuco, spread across 35,000 hectares about 40 kilometres east of Concordia. The company’s website says it has $94 million in hand for the project.
The family member said they would like to see the company’s security assessment for its operations and the location where they housed their employees.
“Did they have knowledge that there were violent incidents near their operations, near the gated neighbourhood of La Clementina where the employees were staying? Did they take preventative measures?” the family member said.
“Why didn’t they suspend their operations before? Why didn’t they take the employees to a more secure place, like Mazatlán, or outside the state?”
The remote and mountainous area around Vizsla Silver’s operations has been the site of gun battles between the Sinaloa cartel factions.
The other engineer
At about 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 23, after armed men kidnapped Vizsla Silver’s employees, Pablo Osorio Sánchez, 26, was waiting for a bus to take him to his worksite, which is near the mining company’s operations.
He was working as engineer for a construction company based in the state of Puebla and had an expertise in highway tunnelling, according to his brother, Mauricio.
He was speaking with his girlfriend on a cellphone when she heard a man’s voice say, “we can work this out,” and then the revving of an engine, before the call was cut off, said Mauricio Osorio Sánchez.
He said his brother’s girlfriend tried to phone back, but the call wouldn’t go through.
“We haven’t received a phone call, we have no answers from authorities. We don’t really know what happened,” said Mauricio Osorio Sánchez, 23, in a telephone interview with CBC News.
Pablo Osorio Sánchez was the oldest of three brothers and took over as a father figure due to an absent dad, Mauricio said.
“He was like our father … he would give us advice, everything like that,” he said.
“My mother is sad and angry because we get no answers.”
The family is part of the Mixteca Indigenous nation.
The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Council for Indigenous Peoples (CEDHAPI) has filed Pablo Osorio Sánchez’s case with the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
The UN human rights body sent a petition to Mexican government representatives in Geneva on Feb. 2 requesting “urgent action” in the case.
In the petition, which was provided to CBC News, the UN committee also makes reference to “the disappearance of the ten [Vizsla Silver employees] due to the interrelation and relevance of the facts to the search and investigation” of Osorio Sánchez’s case.
The petition says that based on information the UN committee gathered as part of its review of the case, it found there were “allegations of collusion between state agents and criminal actors, including in relation to the disappearance.”
Brutal civil war
The Sinaloa cartel’s civil war began in September 2024, after one of Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán’s sons betrayed Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada García and handed him over to U.S. authorities in July that year.
El Mayo once co-led the Sinaloa cartel with El Chapo. Now, those loyal to El Chapo’s sons, called Los Chapitos, and those loyal to El Mayo’s son, called La Mayiza, are engaged in a brutal war that has engulfed the state.
Federal Security and Citizen Protection Secretary Omar Harfuch has said it’s suspected that Vizsla Silver’s employees were kidnapped by a cell linked to Los Chapitos.
There are currently 79 people registered as missing in Concordia, with 30 reported missing since Jan. 1, 2025, according to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
The state has recorded about 1,557 disappearances between Jan. 1, 2025, and Feb. 2, 2026, according to the UN body. The committee linked the numbers of missing persons to the ongoing violence caused by a civil war within the Sinaloa cartel, according to the petition it sent to the Mexican government.
About 6,835 people have disappeared in the state of Sinaloa, according to the Mexican federal missing persons registry. Sinaloa has a population of about three million.