Organized crime in Mexico has found the mangroves an ideal, remote spot to hide their synthetic drug laboratories, leaving fishermen in Sinaloa to deal with contamination affecting their homes and livelihoods.

Thousands of clandestine laboratories producing synthetic drugs are dumping tons of toxic chemicals into Mexico’s most fragile ecosystems. Who is responsible for protecting the environment from the growing number of these laboratories, built to feed the opioid epidemic in the United States? A Quinto Elemento Lab investigation discovered that Mexican authorities could not provide protocols for destroying or handling toxic waste from illegal labs, nor for their cleanup. There have been no environmental studies conducted to measure the implications of this damage, and no legal cases filed against these organized crime polluters. Ver más

Comalapa, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, is a disputed territory for organized crime, is a place where Honduran women are sexually exploited and give birth to children without nationality. This is the story of an illicit business that operates with impunity and also the story of victims who managed to escape from their captors Ver más

Mexico’s president promised to deliver truth and justice for the 43 disappeared students and their families. The former special prosecutor reveals what happened instead Ver más

Violence is not the only cause of death among the 52,000 bodies of unidentified persons in Mexico: a myriad of causes, from illness and accident to even extraordinary conditions. Their clothes also tell the story of their absence. The people who wore those blouses, those pants, those sweatshirts can still be counted on Mexico’s official list of more than 100,000 disappeared persons Ver más

Leaked files reveal nearly $300 million stashed overseas for the Legion of Christ in wake of Vatican investigation. Millions were invested with a corporate landlord that evicted struggling U.S. tenants during pandemic. Ver más

The Vestiges Project is a catalog of objects recovered by the families of six journalists murdered during the last decade in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Ver más

The sounds of a locomotive hitching up train cars attracted people lurking in the shadows and hideouts around the train tracks of Tierra Blanca, Veracruz. They were migrants intent on catching the northbound train to continue their journeys Ver más

The pandemic changed the migration flow at Mexico’s border with Guatemala, and completely altered the dynamics that emerged in October 2018 when hundreds of thousands of Central Americans arrived in migrant caravans. Covid-19 upended the map. Ver más

Since the beginning of the “war on drugs,” more than 38,500 unidentified bodies have been delivered to the country’s morgues, ending up in refrigerated rooms, mass graves, or medical schools. Some of these bodies were disappeared from the state government registries, left in funeral homes or incinerated. This investigation reveals the magnitude of the country’s crisis in dealing with the remains of murder victims. Ver más

As drug traffickers’ bank of choice for many years, HSBC allowed its services to be used as a conduit for money laundering. The US and Mexican governments even slapped historic fines on the bank for its lax controls and permissiveness. Ramón García Gibson was the executive in charge of preventing this from happening. He now holds a high-ranking position in the Mexican government’s anti-money laundering division – a task at which he has failed before. Ver más

In 2015, Mexico City’s government launched an electronic system that would coordinate the work of police, experts and public ministries, to improve their investigative capacity and solve more crimes. Here is the story of a promising remedy that failed. Ver más

How a crew of romanian criminals conquered the world of ATM skimming... They weren’t the people you’d peg for success in the world of finance and technology: a group of young men from a small city in an agricultural region of Romania. But they were clever and they had grit — and a unique skill set. Ver más

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel offered fake jobs, then enslaved them and held them by force. Now they’re foot soldiers for organized crime. They’re alive, but off the grid—completely disappeared. A survivor recounts his days in hell. Ver más

Between 2006 and 2016, almost 2,000 illegal burials were discovered where criminals disappeared their victims. This investigation documented more clandestine graves than those the government has recognized: a new grave has been located on average every two days. Ver más