The citizen search collective Búsqueda x La Paz discovered four clandestine graves on Sunday, March 22, in El Cajoncito, a rural area on the outskirts of the Baja California Sur state capital. The group conducted the search jointly with the State Commission for Missing Persons (CEBP) and the local prosecutor’s office for missing persons cases.
Forensic teams cordoned off the site and began examining each grave individually. El Cajoncito sits near the highway from La Paz to San Juan de la Costa, a stretch of road that has become notorious for hidden burial sites linked to organized crime.
52 Remains Found in La Paz Since May 2024
The discovery is part of a grim pattern. Since May 2024, authorities and search collectives have located 52 human remains across five clandestine cemeteries in the La Paz municipality. The first site was found on a property near the El Cajoncito stream. The other four were located at different points along the La Paz to San Juan de la Costa highway.
Gabriel Manríquez, coordinator of the Búsqueda por la Paz collective, has described the highway as “a pure clandestine cemetery.” The group’s volunteers, though untrained when they started, have learned to identify burial sites through months of fieldwork.
Just one weekend before the March 22 discovery, the same collective found more graves and human remains in both La Paz and the municipality of Comondú, about 130 miles northwest of the capital along the Transpeninsular Highway.
La Paz Leads Baja California Sur in Remains Found
According to the CEBP, La Paz leads the state with 74 sets of human remains recovered over the past four years. Los Cabos follows with 41, then Comondú with 23, and Mulegé with three. Loreto is the only municipality where no remains have been found.
The Sinaloa Cartel’s presence in the region has been linked to the burials. In July 2024 alone, 13 bodies were recovered from 10 graves in Cabo San Lucas. Two months earlier, 18 bodies had been found in 14 graves in La Paz.
Iris Manríquez, founder of Búsqueda x La Paz, told El País in April 2025 that five bodies had already been exhumed from the outskirts of La Paz at that time, with three more graves still awaiting processing. By early 2026, the collective reported that 96 sets of remains had been found in clandestine graves in the La Paz area.
Forensic analysis of the El Cajoncito graves is ongoing, and authorities have not yet confirmed how many remains were recovered from the four sites. The CEBP and search collectives plan to continue operations along the San Juan de la Costa highway, according to BCS Noticias.