Mexican authorities announced on Friday that federal forces had discovered what seemed to be the body of one of the 10 workers of a Canadian mining company who were abducted three weeks ago from a city in the state of Sinaloa. The attorney general’s office released a statement on Friday evening stating that “bodies and human remains” were found during the ongoing search for the kidnapped employees of Vizsla Silver Corp. The statement mentioned that one of the bodies had similar characteristics to one of the missing individuals, and efforts were being made to confirm the identity without specifying the number of other bodies found.
To date, four individuals have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping. The 10 employees of the Vancouver-based company were taken on January 23 from the city of Concordia, located approximately 50 kilometers east of the coastal city of Mazatlán.
Vizsla Silver communicated to CBC News in an email on Friday evening that it was liaising with the Mexican authorities leading the investigation and with the affected families. The company’s statement indicated that it could not provide further comments. Vizsla Silver had previously faced safety concerns regarding its Panuco silver and gold mining exploration project in Sinaloa, leading to a halt in field work on April 4, 2025, due to security issues in the area.
The United Nations Committee on Forced Disappearances is closely monitoring the situation in Sinaloa following a case involving a 26-year-old engineer who was kidnapped on the same morning and in the same city as the Vizsla employees. The UN body submitted a petition to Mexican government representatives in Geneva on February 2 urging “urgent action” in the case of Pablo Osorio Sanchez from Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. The petition highlighted allegations of collusion between state agents and criminal actors in connection with disappearances.
Concordia currently has 79 registered missing persons, with 30 reported missing since January 1, 2025, according to the UN document. In the state of Sinaloa, around 6,835 individuals have disappeared, out of a population of approximately three million people. The UN petition reported 1,557 disappearances in Sinaloa between January 1, 2025, and February 2, 2026, attributing the figures to the ongoing violence stemming from a civil war within the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations.
The conflict, initiated in September 2024, was sparked by a betrayal within the Sinaloa cartel involving Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán’s sons and Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada García. The power struggle between factions loyal to El Chapo’s sons (Los Chapitos) and those loyal to El Mayo’s son (La Mayiza) has resulted in widespread violence across the state. Secretary Omar Harfuch from Federal Security and Citizen Protection suggested that the employees of Vizsla were likely abducted by a group associated with Los Chapitos.