Iron and Gold Mines: Crime Continues Unabated in the Sierra de Manantlán

On the border between Colima and Jalisco—where the wilderness ends and the Peña Colorada mine begins—the wind whips up dust. One walks amidst tracks gouged out by floodwaters, loose stones resembling an old man’s teeth, and rusted wire barring the way. The motorcycle pushes forward as if chewing up the road. The GPS is useless; there is no cell service, no schedule. Only a route that sometimes turns into a sheer drop-off, and at other times, into a dead end.

This journey traverses the *sierra*: mountains blasted with dynamite, fragmented forests, and communities that have learned not to ask questions. The motorcycle makes it possible to dodge landslides, cross eroded tracks, and reach communities where journalists rarely venture. Amidst stones, dust, and steep slopes, every curve is a gamble: one presses on because, out there on the road—where no one ought to be—there is always someone waiting.

It is Holy Thursday. The only mystery in the Sierra de Manantlán is the bus: whether it arrives, at what time, and whether it returns. At the entrance to the Ayotitlán *ejido*, a woman and her daughter wait for the bus on a dirt track, sitting beside two volcanic rocks. One bus goes to Telcruz and the other to Cuautitlán de García Barragán, the mother says, without taking her eyes off the road. Sometimes it runs late; sometimes it bypasses the stop entirely or simply never comes back.

“If landslides block the road, no one makes it up here,” she says. That bus brings rice, paper, soap, and—if they’re lucky—medicine. For many families in the Sierra de Manantlán, it is the only tangible link to the rest of the country.

In western Mexico, Nahua indigenous communities have been demanding—since 2006—the water that mining operations consume without record, the lands that concessions swallowed up without consultation, and justice for the dead whom no one investigates. The Ayotitlán agrarian community remains trapped in a legal and territorial contradiction that no one seems able to resolve.

Since 1975, more than 38,000 hectares have been recognized as communal Nahua indigenous property by presidential decree. However, the community alleges that for decades, substantial portions of this territory have been occupied by external actors lacking legitimate title—mining, ranching, and agribusiness firms—and by extractive operations that have proceeded without the free, prior, and informed consent required by ILO Convention 169, which Mexico ratified in 1990.

The conflict has escalated from the administrative realm to the criminal. At least six community leaders and defenders from Ayotitlán have been murdered, forcibly disappeared, or attacked in recent years after denouncing the expansion of illegal mining beyond official boundaries. Here, armed groups linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) hold sway. Take, for instance, the case of Antonio Díaz Valencia and Ricardo Lagunes Gasca, who disappeared on January 15, 2023, after participating in an agrarian assembly regarding disputed land. Although the pickup truck in which they were traveling was found riddled with bullet holes, authorities have neither offered a credible public account nor charged anyone with the crime.

Added to these events was the murder, in November 2023, of Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz, following his opposition to new incursions into the area known as Paticajo.

The last time his wife saw him alive was when he entered the municipal hall of Cuautitlán de García Barragán, Jalisco, on Friday, November 24, 2023. There is no official record of his entry—nor of his exit. Witnesses claim that police officers took him out through the back door. The next day, he was found dead: a gunshot wound, signs of torture, his body abandoned near the Arroyo Hondo bridge, in the Ayotitlán *ejido* (communal land), Colima.

Forty-six days later, the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office announced the arrest of José Juan A., alias “El Charras,” who had served as the *ejido* commissioner between 2019 and 2021. He was charged with aggravated homicide. María Hermenegildo Roblada—Higinio’s wife, who had been accompanying him—survived. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) recognizes her as “the key witness to the disappearance and death of her husband.” Since then, she has been seeking justice and the intervention of the federal government, all while living under threat.

**Everyone Knows Who’s in Charge**

Perched atop the hill of Ayotitlán, the corrugated metal rooftops gleam like distorted mirrors—alongside the water tanks they received as donations. What is most scarce here is water. “We need it for everything. There’s no water mains here, no wells, nothing. We have so many unmet needs,” says a mother, wearing a blue dress the color of a mantle—much like the one the Virgin is wearing this week.

At the Ayotitlán health center, there is a doctor, but only in the mornings. And there are no supplies. No medicines. In the afternoons, the place is empty—yet night is precisely when it is needed most. What good is having a building if there’s nothing inside? The list of emergencies is endless: scorpion stings, childbirths, fevers. Everything becomes a struggle.

“You never know what lies ahead,” says the mother waiting for the bus.

The daughter adjusts her bag. She speaks of work, of the fields, of corn and beans.

“We do whatever work is available. If there are trucks heading out for the tomato harvest, that’s where we go. Many men never come back. They leave and vanish on the other side [in the United States].”

Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz had already been the victim of a kidnapping in 2022. An armed group held him for hours, interrogated him, and then released him. Despite the threats, he continued to publicly denounce the devastation caused by mining in Peña Colorada—as documented in IACHR Resolution 11/2024.

“Do you know if I can find Mrs. María Hermenegildo around here?” I ask, but the woman remains silent. She stares straight ahead as if she hadn’t heard me. The daughter lowers her gaze.

“Higinio’s wife…” she says at last. “But you won’t find her. Who knows where she is. You’d be better off not going around telling people you’re looking for her.”

The Jalisco State Human Rights Commission documented these cases in its environmental report, *Manantlán Biosphere Reserve*. Between 2020 and 2025, at least half a dozen people were murdered in this region for participating in territorial defense efforts. There were also dozens of threats, disappearances, and reports of illegal mining. In Ayotitlán, there is no doubt as to who is doing the killing.

According to the IACHR, between 2020 and 2023, at least five human rights defenders were murdered: Rogelio Rosales Ramos (son of J. Santos Rosales Contreras), Salvador Cipriano Padilla, Benjamín Ramos Cipriano, Santos Ignacio Chávez, and Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz. Another thirteen community leaders have been threatened, harassed, or abducted by armed groups linked to the CJNG—with the direct complicity of communal authorities and local officials—according to community members affected by the mine.

In Cuautitlán, complaints surface as readily as iron ore in the hills. “The communal members are in league with organized crime,” C. remarks, stating it as matter-of-factly as someone announcing that it is about to rain. He continues: “If they heard me talking about this, they’d take me out. It doesn’t suit their interests.” A silence settles in, thick as fog. There is a sense of drift about C.—the weariness of having rowed against the current for far too long.

“The problem here is the *ejido*,” he recounts. “It is the *ejido* that leases out the land without consulting us—the one that leases it out without giving us any fair compensation.”

In Ayotitlán, territorial control operates through a stable peace maintained among mining companies, the *ejido* leadership, and organized crime.

A. places the apex of this scheme in a house in Casimiro Castillo, in southern Jalisco. That is where, he says, you find “strictly the boss”—the person who, in his view, holds sway over “everything comprising Manzanillo, Zihuatlán, La Huerta, Casimiro Castillo, and Ayotitlán.” This boss has “leaders in Tequesquitlán and Cuautitlán” and a network of enforcers: “He summons you… to tell you to back off a little, or else you’re going down.” That authority, he asserts, is no longer confined to the mountains. “Casimiro is right there near Cuautitlán. So, all the police there are thoroughly bought off—but that *is* organized crime.”

Casimiro Castillo emerged as one of the last strongholds of the CJNG following the downfall of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, *El Mencho*. On February 23, state authorities reported the excavation of a trench and the burning of vehicles along Federal Highway 80, effectively cutting off the stretch connecting to Autlán.

The collusion he describes excludes no uniform. When asked directly whether the category of “organized crime” includes state and municipal police officers, C. replies: “Everyone—everyone across the board.” He then illustrates this with a concrete case: that of a community member who had filed a writ of *amparo* (constitutional injunction) against the mine. According to his account, “they were the ones who did the job… they put him under guard to load him into a patrol car and bring him in so he would withdraw his *amparo*. They themselves transported him—in a pickup truck belonging to organized crime—all the way to the agrarian court…” C. maintains that this operation wasn’t an isolated initiative by an armed group, but rather the result of a direct order issued “from the communal commission to organized crime,” and of a payment agreed upon by the “regional committee.” He summarizes it in a single line: “The regional committee paid them a hefty sum to take him away… They threatened him—along with his entire family; absolutely everything—to force him to withdraw.”

During the 2020 campaign to elect a new *ejidal* commission, community members recount receiving a warning prior to the vote: “Campaign however you like, but the one who is going to win is our candidate.” The “our” in this context is attributed to an armed faction that acts as the arbiter of internal politics. This, C. notes, aligns with the decision to keep the road connecting Cuautitlán to the highland communities impassable: “Right now, you can only travel by horseback; if we take a pickup truck, we get stuck up there. It works better for them that way, because it prevents the government from swooping in immediately.”

On the border between Jalisco and Colima, the word “threat” ceases to be an abstraction and becomes routine. C. puts it this way: “Those of us involved in this line of work live under threat.” He explains that the *halcones*—the cartel lookouts—”have no qualms about hunting you down”; they don’t confront you face-to-face, but rather “from behind.” This, he notes, keeps a significant portion of the *ejido*—the communal land—”skittish,” holding back and keeping a low profile because “there is no support system” when organized crime moves in. No one dares to name them, yet everyone knows who is in charge.

Some community members assert that the problem is no longer just the drug cartels, but rather a complex machinery where mining, political, and criminal interests intersect. Other community members insist that the cartels operate as the armed wing of corporations seeking to seize control of the territory.

Violence, however, isn’t an anomaly here. In Mexico—as of April 30, 2026—the federal government reports 133,560 missing persons, according to the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons. Many of these disappearances are concentrated in regions where the mineral wealth beneath the soil is valued more highly than human life.

**The Land Is Exploited Relentlessly**

From Ayotitlán to Cuautitlán, the landscape stretches for nearly 30 kilometers of sheer degradation. The road winds downward between gouged-out hillsides, trees with their roots laid bare, and loose stones that bounce and clatter beneath the tires. There are stretches where the pavement is cracked and crumbling; others where nothing remains but loose dirt, exposed roots, and the faint, blurred tracks of pickup trucks.

It is Good Friday. There is no Mass, no church bells ringing, and no religious processions. There is only a motionless figure standing at the entrance to the village—a *Judas* effigy. I cut the engine on my motorcycle in front of the general store. A man sits drinking a beer in the shade—the can cold in his hand, the heat pressing down all around him. Asking about Higinio in Cuautitlán is like dropping a nail onto the ground and waiting to see who flinches. People fall silent; they adjust their hats and avert their gaze.

“He’d been having trouble for a while,” the man says.

Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz had been under the protection of the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders since 2021, after receiving threats. He had reported illegal logging and extraction in the Sierra de Manantlán. He was also pursuing legal action to ensure that more than 140 Indigenous families could vote in the election for the *ejido* commissioner.

“What happened to the defender was political,” he says, as if the beer were loosening his tongue. “The commissioner was afraid of losing control of the Ayotitlán *ejido*.”

“And that’s why they killed him?”

“Around here, people know when to speak and when not to. He already knew they had a target on his back. Even so, he came here.”

The man finishes his beer. He crushes the can under his foot and points toward the Judas effigy.

“We’re going to burn it in a little while.”

In the town square, the name of the municipality is displayed in colorful letters, as if it were a tourist destination. No one denies that it is, but few are willing to talk. In Cuautitlán, the name of Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz lingers in the air, as if he were still walking these streets. From there all the way to Minatitlán, Colima, the motorcycle descends without pause—a zigzagging plunge down barren slopes, along broken roads, and through ruts that tear at the path. The rear wheel skids on loose soil. The bed of the Armería River is dry: a desert of hot stones. Fine dust drifts in from Peña Colorada.

“I worked there for twenty years; I was a contractor. There’s big money to be made, but it all belongs to someone else. Around here, nobody moves a single stone without permission from Peña Colorada,” says P.—a man with a graying beard and worn-out boots—speaking from the shade of a tree.

I show him the map on my cell phone, and P. studies it intently. He moves his thumb across the screen, orienting himself to locate the main open pit, and then another one further north, just outside the perimeter. It isn’t part of the official mining complex.

—Those are *Las Pesadas*. They mine illegally there—but even the folks at the top know about it. Who do you think supplies the machinery?

From the sky, right next to the mine’s main open pit, an irregular extraction site known as *Las Pesadas* looks like a flayed field. There is no symmetry, no layout, no industrial logic. It is churned-up earth, slashed open as if by knives. The vegetation comes to an abrupt halt, giving way to yellowish terrain, muddy puddles, and a greenish lagoon. The Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection has documented the illegality of these iron extraction operations on land within the municipality of Minatitlán, noting their direct impact on the Tepehuajes stream and on timber species such as the *guásima*, *rosa morada*, and *parota* trees.

A little further north of Peña Colorada—past Cerro Prieto and just before reaching Chanquiahuitl, in the state of Jalisco—the scene repeats itself. Gashed hillsides, irregular trenches. In this zone, extraction takes place outside official boundaries, yet it is carried out using machinery that appears anything but improvised.

The terrain looks torn apart: patches of ochre, mounds of excavated material. There are no fences and no visible security; yet, work is underway here. It has been going on for years. No one in the neighboring communities is unaware of who operates the machines, though few dare to name them. The coordinates shift. The pattern of extraction spreads like a net: they open a site, they extract, and then they vanish. Between Jalisco and Colima, the land is prospected without permission and exploited without pause. What was once wild brush is now nothing but churned-up ore.

Thousands of Tons of Iron

From Minatitlán, the road toward the town of Peña Colorada runs ten kilometers in the direction of Manzanillo. Halfway along the route, the first line of green pipes crossing the road comes into view. The motorcycle follows the line of pipes as if it were a racetrack. The mine’s crest is now visible: a grayish open pit. There is no need to reach the very edge; Peña Colorada looms large long before you arrive. Everything that moves obeys the logic of extraction. The road leading to the mine is, in practice, not public: a chain blocks passage onto a path that functions as an armored industrial corridor—reserved exclusively for the dump trucks and haulers that enter and exit in single file.

At one of the kiosks in the main square—next to a sculpture of two Xolo dogs dancing—E., a man with a weather-beaten face and a baseball cap, sips a warm soft drink. “I drive a mining dump truck,” he says. E. pulls out his cell phone and holds it up as an act of faith.

On the screen, a column of smoke rises from the hillside like a ghost that refuses to fade away.

“This is a blast,” he says, pointing at the video—footage captured at the very moment of detonation within the mining complex.

The mine is vast. In the background of the video, a metallic murmur can be heard: radio chatter, alarms, disjointed voices. “It misfired!” someone shouts; dust billows outward, and the slopes tremble. The image shakes. Some people back away, while others simply watch.

“With dynamite?” I ask him.

E. nods, as if it were already obvious.

“When there are blasts, they clear everyone out of their work areas. That’s why we look so far away. But even so, you can still feel the shockwave. That happened just last week.”

“Holy shit!” another worker exclaims in the video following the explosion.

E. has seen it all. He has been working here for twenty-five years. He has witnessed as many as three blasts in a single day. It is part of the rhythm—just like the accidents. But he doesn’t want to talk about those, claiming it brings bad luck. It is all part of an engineering scheme that operates off the map. He swipes his finger across his phone screen and shows me another clip: a gray landscape—no sky, no trees. There are machines that look like giant insects: hydraulic arms, treads, colossal shovels.

“That’s the shovel that loads the big trucks,” he explains. Then he points to another shape in the background, half-buried in the haze of kicked-up dust. “And those are the drills—the ones that bore the holes where they plant the explosives.”

The Peña Colorada mine operates under the Benito Juárez Peña Colorada Mining Consortium—a strategic cog in the steel industry machine. Although legally registered as an independent entity, its operations adhere to a corporate blueprint designed to guarantee absolute control over production for two specific companies: ArcelorMittal and Ternium.

Peña Colorada was not always in private hands. In 1984, it was established as a mixed-ownership consortium in which the Mexican State and domestic companies—such as Altos Hornos de México, HYLSA, and Fundidora Monterrey—held stakes. However, with the collapse of the steel industry in the 1990s, privatization took its course. Today, every ton of iron leaving Peña Colorada already has a destination assigned before it is even extracted. There is no open market, and there are no alternative buyers: 50% of the consortium is owned by ArcelorMittal, and the other 50% by Ternium. That is the extent of it. In practical terms, the country has handed over one of its primary iron ore reserves.

The history of this corporate structure began in the 1970s, when Peña Colorada was a state-run project spearheaded by Altos Hornos de México and U.S. Steel. Privatization arrived in the 1990s, cloaked in the guise of modernization. Mittal Steel and Sicartsa—predecessors to ArcelorMittal and Ternium, respectively—took control of the consortium. Since then, the ore has flowed uninterrupted into the global steel industry, while indigenous communities continue to assert their right to self-determination over their territories through free, prior, and informed consent.

In 2023 alone, Peña Colorada extracted 3.97 million tons of iron—according to the consortium’s own figures—a vast quantity sufficient to erect at least 540 towers, each the size of the Eiffel Tower, standing one atop the other. It is enough steel to completely encase Guadalajara’s historic center: the San Juan de Dios Market, Agua Azul Park, the Degollado Theater, the Cathedral, the Niños Héroes roundabout, and even the Vía RecreActiva. Everything vanishes beneath a scale model of Paris, multiplied to the point of sheer delirium.

Peña Colorada currently holds 20 active mining concessions registered with the General Directorate of Mines under the Secretariat of Economy. Collectively, these concessions span approximately 39,034 hectares—representing one of the largest land areas controlled by a single company in western Mexico. For example, Concession Title No. 227602, *Los Juanes*, was granted on July 17, 2006—during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term—and will remain in force until July 17, 2056. It is an exploitation concession covering 7,516.40 hectares within the municipality of Cuautitlán.

Los Juanes is the largest polygon within the mining complex. It borders directly on the Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve and encompasses territories inhabited by indigenous Nahua communities, including Ayotitlán, La Astilla, Mameyito, San Antonio, and Los Potros. A detailed review of the concession titles reveals that extractive activity holds permits valid until 2062.

Furthermore, standing out among the most extensive concessions is the Salomón lot—located in the southern part of the state of Jalisco—which covers an area of ​​11,899 hectares and holds valid authorization until the year 2060: another 35 years of iron extraction.

**The People Taken Away to Work Who Never Return**

At noon, the sky is a blazing furnace. It burns flamelessly above the exhausted peaks, where only the skeletons of charred trees remain. I make my way along a stony track descending from the sierra toward the valley. The air strikes my face—dry and harsh. To the left, burnt trunks stand erect like fossils. To the right, mounds of red earth. The engine roars amidst potholes and stretches of loose gravel. Every so often, a famished donkey, an abandoned tire, a gateless corral.

I stop the motorcycle when I spot a man standing beside a mesquite tree. D. is 47 years old, though his weathered skin and sunken eyes add another ten years to his appearance. He wears an open shirt, soaked in sweat, his face shaded by a cap. His hands are marked: old scars, broken fingernails, skin as hard as his silence.

“After the fires, they arrive,” he says, without taking his eyes off the horizon, “in pickup trucks. They take people away to work up there. They don’t even ask anymore.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

He doesn’t answer. He simply lifts his chin toward the barren slopes where the Peña Colorada mine lies hidden—up there, where the mountain has been hollowed out.

I get back on my motorcycle. The road grows rockier. I cross a dry stretch where water must have once flowed. In the distance, the wind kicks up small dust devils that spin aimlessly. Further ahead stands a shop—a structure of cinder blocks and corrugated metal with a single open door. Outside, there is a broken chair, two skinny dogs asleep, and an empty crate of sodas. I cut the engine. The dust settles. From the shadows within, a voice speaks without looking up:

“Nobody around here says a word.”

The woman remains seated behind an unvarnished wooden counter. She wears a light-colored *rebozo* over her head and a floral-print dress that looks older than she is. In her hands, she holds a damp cloth, with which she unhurriedly wipes down a dust-covered jar of Nescafé. I ask if she knows any of the people who leave to work up there. She doesn’t answer immediately. She places the jar on the shelf alongside others—all of them empty.

“No, I don’t know them. But I know who isn’t here anymore. People leave this place. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t.”

She pauses. Outside, a donkey brays as if it has lost all sense of time. The heat shows no signs of letting up.

“And why do they leave?”

“Because there’s nothing here. No school, no doctor, no corn. Just dust,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “Sometimes someone from the company comes by and says there’s work up there—that the pay is good. And people sign up. What else are you supposed to do? You can’t exactly say no to them.”

“And what if they don’t come back?” “So no one asks anymore,” she says with a certain impartiality—like someone repeating an old recipe.

“We’ve learned here that whoever asks gets tangled up.”

The woman puts the rag away in a bucket.

“You’re a journalist, aren’t you?”

I nod.

“You won’t get anything out of this. Not here. What happens here doesn’t go anywhere else. Not on the radio, not over the phone. And even if it did… nothing would happen.”

He stands up. He takes a bottle of water from the refrigerator and sets it on the counter.

“Here. It’s cold.”

The sheet-metal door creaks in a sudden gust of wind. Outside, the dust continues to swirl, as if someone had roused it from its slumber.

It is a waterless mine.

A dozen kilometers later, near the *ejido* of San Antonio, beneath the sparse shade of an avocado tree, three young men are drinking lukewarm Coca-Cola from Styrofoam cups. There is no ice. One sits on a tire; another leans against a motorcycle. They are sucking on hard candy lollipops. Leaning against one of their bikes stands a mannequin dressed in work clothes: a shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, firecrackers hanging across its chest like bandoliers, its face obscured by a bandana and a crooked cap. Its jeans bear spray-paint markings: a black cross, an incomplete symbol.

The Judas is ready to blow.

“It’s so they can see what happens to traitors,” one of them says, without raising his voice.

He doesn’t specify which act of betrayal he is referring to. He speaks as if no further explanation were needed, then spits out a wad of phlegm and takes another sip from his cup. His words drop like a stone into a well.

No one bothers to lean in to see if they echo. Half a kilometer away, in the direction of Peña Colorada, the earth lies exposed. Furrows are visible, along with buried tires and the tracks of a backhoe. There are no signs, no official seals. It is a site like so many others in the region—a place where extraction takes place without visible permits, without any names signed to the deed.

According to the Public Registry of Water Rights, Peña Colorada neither extracts nor discharges a single liter of national water. This is what its two active titles indicate: one for “industrial use,” issued by the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin Agency, and another for “services,” granted by the Colima Local Directorate. Both records are clear: zero cubic meters of surface water, zero groundwater, zero discharge. Not a single drop. Nevertheless, the mine encompasses 394,067 square meters of federal zones, distributed across 63 annexes. Nearly 40 hectares of national lands—authorized for industrial activities—yet lacking the water resources required for an operation of this magnitude.

In June 2021, Representative Laura Imelda Pérez Segura (of the Morena political party) submitted a motion for a point of agreement regarding Peña Colorada to the Standing Committee of the Congress of the Union. She revealed the impossibility of freely accessing the Consortium’s Environmental Impact Statement (MIA)—the document that every company must submit to the government to obtain a permit to operate in natural areas—despite the fact that the company’s operations directly affect indigenous Nahua communities in the municipality of Cuautitlán de García Barragán, Jalisco, as well as residents of Minatitlán, Colima.

As stated in that legislative proposal, the Colima delegation of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) acknowledged the existence of a valid environmental authorization covering an area of ​​827 hectares and spanning a duration of 23 years. However, it refused to provide an electronic copy of the Environmental Impact Assessment (MIA), making its review conditional upon an in-person visit. Furthermore, the proposal highlights a contradiction between federal delegations: while Semarnat in Colima acknowledges the environmental authorization, its counterpart office in Jalisco responded that it possesses no information regarding concessions within the Peña Colorada area of ​​influence.

Pérez Segura warns that the affected communities were never consulted. In the legislator’s view, Semarnat’s repeated refusal to grant access to the MIA hinders the full exercise of human rights regarding participation, access to environmental information, and the self-determination of indigenous peoples.

**Tailings Dams: Residues of a Crushed Mountain**

On the other side of the highway—behind the open-pit mine—lies something that does not appear on tourist maps: a tailings dam. It isn’t water. It isn’t earth. It is the ground residue of a crushed mountain—a slurry of dead metals and nameless chemicals. The mine’s waste is buried there. The tailings have no scent, make no sound, and do not move. Yet, they are alive—breathing slowly, seeping into the very veins of the valley.

From a satellite image, it resembles a wound contained by concrete. A dead pond—vast and opaque. This is where everything that doesn’t turn into profit ends up: iron dust, washing chemicals, and subterranean sediments. No one knows what it truly contains. Along the road separating the mine from the dam run high-pressure pipelines, cutting across the highway like lines drawn with a ruler. They emit no sound, yet their mere presence organizes the entire landscape.

Every curve in the road seems designed so as not to interrupt its flow. Here, iron is not merely extracted: it is piped, transported, and imposed.

Twenty kilometers before reaching Manzanillo, the scene repeats itself, but on a different scale: the Peña Colorada dewatering plant—situated alongside the village of Paticajo—occupies a tract of land large enough to hold the entire village more than five times over. No one knows for certain how much material has been dumped there. Its exact depth remains unknown, as do any potential leaks or long-term effects. Enough is known to warrant silence. And enough remains unknown to allow it to keep growing.

The Port of Manzanillo

Here, the sea is machinery. From the docks of Manzanillo, cranes rise up like the vertebrae of an extinct beast, alongside shipping containers stacked like the building blocks of a logistical empire: Maersk, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd, Hamburg Süd—distributors of global goods. From this coast, the ore extracted from Peña Colorada begins its journey. “This is where the rebar ships out,” says a worker smoking outside an Oxxo convenience store. He says it with the air of someone announcing a birth. The material produced here is transported by ArcelorMittal—the Luxembourg-based conglomerate—to its plants in Europe, where it is used to manufacture “green” cars.

The *malecón*—the seaside promenade—flashes past the car window like a gray ribbon. Families and vendors stroll by; the sea lies right alongside, yet inside the car, it feels like being trapped in a sealed room. This chronicle, which began with a search for a widow, concludes with an encounter with a son. L. turns his focus directly to his father—and to the things that went unspoken in their home: “My dad never really told us what exactly he did for a living back then… as a rule, he just didn’t talk about his work.”

—To protect yourselves?

—Yes, so we wouldn’t know. More than anything, so we wouldn’t worry our family members. We didn’t have exact knowledge of what my father was getting involved in.

L. extends this sense of fear to the community: his father walks with people from the town—they keep him company—but no one reveals anything. “We’d ask people, and they didn’t want to tell us anything either.” His mother found out “through various channels” and ordered him to step away. The father’s response remains etched in memory: “He didn’t step away from it.” And in the very next breath, the backstory emerges: “There had already been many warnings from the [municipal] government regarding people linked to the cartels.”

L. recounts the threats like someone enumerating road signs on a treacherous highway: one saves you, the next one kills you. “Once, they mistook me for my father, and I was terrified—they actually chased me in a couple of Tacoma pickup trucks in Ayotitlán. I managed to get away.”

May 2022 returns in his voice with a visceral precision. “The first time they took him—back in May—I hid. I left my motorcycle parked right there and ran into the bushes.” He speaks of his body pressed flat against the earth, of holding his breath, counting the seconds so as not to be detected. “I heard the truck stop; nothing happened, so I waited about half an hour until the truck finally drove off. I was truly terrified—absolutely terrified.”

L. returned to his community seeking peace, only to find a scene already unfolding. “I got home, and a short while later, we heard a truck driving up the road—and my father wasn’t there either.” Ten minutes later, his father reappeared. L. retreated to his room. Then he came out. His mother met him with a phrase that shattered the night: “Son, they’ve taken your father; the police said they’re going to bring him back any minute now.”

The second time, it didn’t happen anywhere near him. It happened in the very place where guarantees of safety ought to exist. “My mother was there; it happened right at the [municipal] government offices. And that was it—from that moment on, we never heard anything from him again.” The next day dawns with the news pinned to the pillow: “around six or seven in the morning, when they found the body.” L. arrives home from work at six in the evening and finds the house empty; then his sister arrives, followed by the phrase that shatters his chest: “Dad hasn’t come home yet… that’s when the panic really set in.”

At nine o’clock that night, the phone rings; they wait three hours, receiving conflicting reports that shuttle him around as if he were a package: “he was in the *villa*… they moved him to the orchard… and just like that, they kept dragging him from one place to another.” At five in the morning, an anonymous call pinpoints the location: “the body was already in the Arroyo Hondo.” The family goes there. “That is where we saw his lifeless body.” L. describes life afterward as a choreography of alibis.

L. offers a reason to keep going: “It is the feeling I have toward my family—toward my dad. He fought for us; now we have to fight for him.” The community, he says, remains just as exposed: “Nothing has changed. We still live in panic that they might come for us.” And that is why he chooses to keep certain things about his mother to himself—why he asks for discretion, why he is wary even of crossing paths with strangers: “I want to handle this as discreetly as possible so that they don’t strike.”

On the waterfront promenade, a broken umbrella spins in circles.

Source: Milenio