The grief is mounting as the bodies of kidnapped workers of a Canadian mining company have been identified in Mexico

Jaime Castañeda said he identified the body of his 43-year-old brother who is a geologist on Sunday by looking at the photos presented to him by officials at the local headquarters in the Mexican city of Mazatlán, northwest of Sinaloa.

José Manuel Castañeda Hernández worked for Vancouver-based mining company Vizsla Silver Corp. when he was kidnapped on Jan. 23, and nine other workers, from Concordia, a municipality located about 50 kilometers east of Mazatlán.

“Actually, this has been very painful to be here, in a place we don’t want to be,” said Jaime. Castañeda, in a phone interview with CBC News.

José Manuel Castañeda Hernández, originally from Guerrero state, was a husband and father of two children, a 14-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter.

“It is very difficult to see … how they are suffering,” it said Jaime Castañeda. “There is no justice in what is happening.”

The identity of the other two workers kidnapped by Vizsla Silver Corp., in the state of Zacatecas, was also confirmed by a family member and a federal politician on Sunday.

All three men were found dead late last week by federal authorities near a rural village called El Verde, about 15 kilometers north of Concordia.

Their bodies were found in what local media widely described as a mass grave.

The abductions and the discovery of dozens of bodies in the mountainous area around Concordia came after an outbreak of violence fueled by an 18-month civil war between gangs of the Sinaloa Cartel – one of the world’s most powerful organized crime groups.

One of the groups, called Los Chapitos, remains loyal to the sons of the now imprisoned Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán. They fought a group known as La Mayiza loyal to the son of Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada, who once led the Sinaloa Cartel and El Chapo.

The Secretary of Security and Public Protection in Mexico, Omar Harfuch, said that it is suspected that the cell connected to Los Chapitos is the one behind the kidnapping of the workers of this mining company.

The Attorney General’s Office confirmed in a statement on Friday that authorities found bodies and human remains in the area El Verde location, without specifying a number or using the term mass grave. The statement said one of the bodies had “marks” of one of the missing Vizsla Silver employees.

“We are devastated by this outcome and the tragic loss of life. Our deepest sympathies go out to our colleagues’ families, friends and colleagues, and the entire Concordia community,” Vizsla Silver said in an emailed statement to CBC News.

“As we grieve, we are focused on the safe recovery of those missing and on supporting all affected families and our people at this incredibly difficult time.”

Jaime Castañeda said he met with at least seven other families at the local headquarters of the attorney general who were there to identify the bodies taken from the area.

The families of two Vizsla Silver workers in Zacatecas state were among those asked to identify the bodies in Mazatlán, said Zacatecas State Attorney General Cristian Paul Camacho.

“We are in contact with both families … and one of the families recently told us that they are already in the process of doing identification procedures,” said Camacho, in a phone interview with CBC News.

Ignacio Aurelio Salazar Flores, 40, from Zacatecas, was one of the workers whose body was identified, his wife Dayanara Nataly Esparza confirmed on Sunday.

Esparza told CBC News in a text message that it was “the hardest day” of her life, adding that she was too worried to speak.

Ownership of a second job in Zacatecas, José Ángel Hernández Vélez, 37, confirmed on social media by Sen. Geovanna Bañuelos, who comes from the same region and is a member of the Labor Party that is aligned with the government.

Canadian mining company Capstone Copper also sent a statement of condolences Hernández Velez.

Abduction may be a message: analyst

David Mora, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, went to the Concordia area in mid-January, days before the kidnapping, to gather testimony from families displaced by the violence and returning home.

Mora said he was told that Los Chapitos had been expelled from the region and the La Mayiza side told the families that it was safe to return.

“If we think, as the government says, that the team that participated in the kidnapping is Los Chapitos, then I can say that it is a show of strength, to send a message that they are not out of the picture in that part of Sinaloa,” said Mora.

Targeting workers affiliated with a third-party company, such as Vizsla Silver, may be part of their calculations, he said.

“These people are connected to a Canadian company and this area has many strategies because of minerals as well as the logging industry,” he said. “It suggests the political nature of this attack.”

There have been 2,776 cases of deliberate killings and 3,290 people reported missing since the war between the groups broke out in 2024, according to figures compiled by the Noroeste news agency in Sinaloa.

Now José Manuel Castañeda Hernández move the columns on this ugly math graph.

“He loved the mines, he loved being in the camps, doing research,” said Jaime Castañeda. “And this work is passed down from generation to generation, because our father was also a miner.”

Castañeda said he last saw his brother on Jan. 7 after dropping him off at the bus station in the city of Cuernavaca, which is south of Mexico City. His brother had to take a bus to the capital to catch a flight to Mazatlán and back to work.

“He was younger than me and I looked after him when he was young. It’s like he was my son – I raised him,” he said.

“I have the memory of a good person who always helped people. He always told the truth. Always, always, always. All his life, he was like that Noble.”