Nearly 1,900 vanished in and around Guadalajara. Now the World Cup arrives

MEXICO CITY — The highway from Guadalajara city airport to the city center has been newly paved, and the city’s famous intersection has received a $4 million renovation. The city is abuzz with renovation projects as Guadalajara prepares to host four World Cup football matches in June.

But there’s one thing the 3 million fans expected to flock to the city won’t see: Hundreds of bodies have been found in secret graves dug by Mexico’s infamous Next Generation Jalisco Cartel. Scores appeared on the main route to Akron Stadium, where the games will be played.

One of the remains belonged to a 17-year-old high school student who went to sell his motorcycle to help his unemployed uncle. He disappeared. When his uncle started looking for him, he also disappeared. In another area, the bones of a 34-year-old mobile phone repairman were found. He was a father of two who ventured out to buy used tennis shoes.

According to statistics compiled by the state of Jalisco, 1,907 bodies were found in Guadalajara and surrounding cities between 2018 and March of this year.

The arrival of the World Cup is an opportunity for Mexico’s second largest city to shine on the international stage, and the Jalisco state government has launched an optimistic campaign highlighting the municipality where the games will be played: “Zapopan, the heart of football” continues the slogan.

Families searching for their loved ones responded sarcastically, “Zapopan, the heart of secret graves.”

Aerial view of the La Minerva roundabout fountain in Guadalajara, Mexico, taken on June 27, 2025.

(Credits Ruiz/AFP via Getty Images)

Since January 2025 alone, search parties and authorities have discovered 58 graves containing 226 remains within the city limits. There were five graves within three miles of Akron Stadium.

Three graves containing 15 bodies were found a mile away from the city’s iconic La Minerva intersection, a massive traffic circle dotted with fountains, greenery and a towering statue of the Roman goddess Minerva. Others were found not far from Chapultepec Street, a popular tourist destination.

Liliana Meza, mother of Carlos Maximiliano Romero Meza, who disappeared on October 22, 2020, poses with her calling card at Glorieta de las Personas Desaparecidas in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Friday, May 15, 2026. Inspired by World Cup football stickers, the founders of the Luz de Esperanza Desaparecidos Jalisco collective created the cards to draw attention to cases of missing persons ahead of the World Cup. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be held in Jalisco.

(Alejandra Leyva/For The Times)

Flyers posted by search parties with photos and identification information about missing people have become a common sight on the main streets of Guadalajra’s historic center.

(Alejandra Leyva / For the Times)

Although cartel violence rarely touches tourists and tourist sites in Mexico, critics say the graves are an embarrassment for state and city leaders.

Amid all this cleansing, little official attention has been paid to the increasing number of hidden graves that persistent family-funded search parties have found in recent months.

Jaime Aguilar, spokesman for the Jalisco Warrior Searchers group, which finds an average of two graves a month, said large machines and diggers were working non-stop throughout the city before the games. “But when we ask for a backhoe to assist with our searches, it is never available,” he said.

Over the years, hidden graves have been discovered in rural areas, industrial areas, along roadsides, inside buildings, and even in the heart of Guadalajara. The Jalisco state government has been tracking serious discoveries, but an analysis by The Times and Puente News Collaborative shows most of them are concentrated in the Guadalajara area.

Flyers posted by search parties with photos and identification information about missing people have become a common sight on the main streets of the city’s historic center, as seen here on Friday, May 15, 2026.

(Alejandra Leyva/For The Times)

Earlier this year, authorities found a blood-soaked safe house a mile from Akron Stadium, where cartel enemies were tortured. A person was found buried there. Approximately 100 sets of remains were found in 500 garbage bags buried in shallow graves over a 10-kilometer area.

The tombs and the possibility of more being discovered worried Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. A Mexican official familiar with tournament planning said he feared FIFA, the international soccer federation in charge of the games, would move the Mexican games to the United States or Canada, other countries hosting the games, because of violence.

This fear was highlighted in February when Mexican special forces killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the ultra-violent New Generation Jalisco Cartel. Law enforcement officials said Guadalajara was a stronghold for the criminal organization.

Cartel members responded to El Mencho’s death by setting fire to cars and buses and blocking the main exits from Guadalajara. The city was briefly paralyzed. Armed people used their power in the city and burned 80 markets and many pharmacies.

In the days after the violence, FIFA officials met with the Mexican government to review security for the Guadalajara matches. Sheinbaum planned to send 100,000 security personnel, including Army soldiers and police officers, to stadiums in Guadalajara and the country’s two other host cities, Mexico City and Monterrey. FIFA has determined that it will not change World Cup venues.

U.S. law enforcement has been advising Mexico on counterterrorism methods, including training to spray drone bombs, a weapon that cartels are increasingly using to terrorize communities, attack enemies and target military convoys. US special forces are training Mexican military teams to repel attacks on stadiums.

In the historic center of Guadalajara, traditional cityscapes and World Cup-related images are on display, as well as brochures with photographs and identifying information about missing persons.

(Alejandra Leyva / For the Times)

Brochures with photos and identification information about missing people are seen in Plaza Liberacion, Guadalajara’s main square.

(Alejandra Leyva / For the Times)

The Mexican government had already witnessed the Jalisco cartel’s penchant for brazen killing. In December, about four miles from Akron Stadium, gunmen fired more than 3,000 bullets into a produce distribution center manager’s car in broad daylight. The gunfight between security guards and the cartel took place just a few blocks away from the police station. It took police teams about half an hour to reach the scene.

Security experts say the state of Jalisco has become a cartel killing zone in recent years. Some graves discovered in the Guadalajara area contained a single body, some contained more than 40, and a few contained 95 or more bodies.

In 2023, the dismembered remains of nine teenagers and stuffed into garbage bags were found in a canyon in Zapopan. They worked at a Jalisco cartel call center where telemarketers defrauded Americans of millions of dollars with a timeshare scheme. It is believed that young people upset their employers.

Traffickers recruit teenagers, including minors, to serve as foot soldiers in their bloody mission to control drug trafficking routes in Mexico. Some of these youths were lured by ads promising well-paying jobs, only to discover they were being directed to a Jalisco cartel training camp an hour outside of Guadalajara. Here, recruits were forced to kill other soldiers as a test, Mexican security officials said.

On Friday, in Plaza Liberacion, the city’s main square, there are brochures with photos and information about missing persons.

(Alejandra Leyva/For The Times)

A Jalisco state representative said the cartel has recruited more than 45,000 minors across Mexico in recent years.

Some of Guadalajara’s upscale neighborhoods were spared the violence, while families in the metropolitan area saw hundreds of children disappear, some reappearing and dying in cartel battlegrounds in Jalisco and the states of Sinaloa and Michoacán, researchers said.

The Jalisco state government lists more than 16,000 reports of missing persons; this is the largest number among Mexican states. More than 130,000 people were reported missing across the country.

Despite the preparations and the excitement of the country’s large football fan base, World Cup excitement has not spread among the families of the missing and the search teams searching for new graves in Guadalajara every week.

Natalia Leticia García’s son disappeared in 2017. He began his own investigation and formed a group to help find other victims. Eight years later, García’s group found 26 graves. Some of the finds are bags filled with severed heads, while others simply hold weapons. Making it harder to piece together remains was a cartel tactic, he said.

“This is so cruel,” Garcia said. His son César Ulises Quintero García remains missing.

Fisher is a special correspondent. This article was published alongside: Puente News collaborator, A nonprofit bilingual newsroom covering stories from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border.