Chilling scene at a crematorium in Ciudad Juárez

MEXICO CITY—An anonymous call to emergency services alerted state authorities to alleged irregularities at a private crematorium in the border town of Ciudad Juárez.

After entering the site, located south of the border city, agents from the northern state of Chihuahua came across a chilling discovery last Thursday: hundreds of embalmed bodies piled up.

In that crematorium in Ciudad Juárez, 383 bodies and the remains of six others who had been dead for "a minimum of four to three years" were found , Chihuahua prosecutor César Jáuregui told the press.

Although Mexico has been facing a forensic crisis for years due to the accumulation of numerous bodies in morgues, the case has sparked controversy and revived a similar incident that occurred more than a decade ago when 60 bodies were found in an abandoned crematorium.

So far, authorities do not know why the crematorium, which worked with six funeral homes in Ciudad Juárez, had accumulated so many bodies at the site and had not cremated them, Jáuregui said, while suggesting that there may have been irregularities in the handling of the bodies.

"Who knows what these individuals' ulterior motive was, because the storage on that number also suggests they weren't providing the service?" he added.

The owner of the crematorium, José Luis Arellano Cuarón, and the establishment's employee, Facundo Martínez, have been arrested in the case. They will appear before a judge on Monday and be charged with " improper burial of corpses ," the state prosecutor reported.

The State Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Coespris) of Ciudad Juárez announced last week that it had initiated proceedings for administrative violations against the private crematorium, which it said had valid operating permits.

While the investigation continues, state prosecutors have begun recovering the bodies accumulated at the facility for classification and identification.

Images of the Ciudad Juárez crematorium have been circulating in the media, where prosecutors set up several white tents and a container to inspect and preserve the bodies.

For decades, Mexico has faced a serious problem of disappearances and a forensic crisis due to the accumulation of more than 50,000 unidentified bodies in morgues, the lack of infrastructure and forensic personnel , and the difficulty in investigating and resolving cases of missing persons, which now total 129,742.

Following the scandal that erupted in March over the discovery of numerous skeletal remains and items of clothing on a property in the western state of Jalisco that was used by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that she would promote an initiative to strengthen the search for missing persons.

In that regard, the Senate on Friday approved reforms proposed by Sheinbaum in an effort to strengthen the State's capacity to identify missing persons through a Single Identity Platform that will interconnect public and private databases and include biometric data such as fingerprints and photographs to expedite location.

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