The family of Pablo Osorio Sánchez is urging Mexican federal authorities to connect the murder of the 26-year-old engineer to the investigation concerning the January abduction of 10 Canadian mining company employees.
Osorio Sánchez was taken in the same town and timeframe when armed individuals kidnapped the Vizsla Silver Corp. workers and contractors. His body was interred in the same hidden graves where nine out of the ten abducted workers were discovered.
The family believes that details regarding the Vizsla Silver abductions might shed light on the circumstances surrounding Osorio Sánchez’s tragic end.
Jaime López, Osorio Sánchez’s uncle, expressed the family’s need for clarity on who abducted him and why. They have numerous inquiries but few answers, as per a phone conversation with CBC News from Florida.
On the morning of Jan. 23, between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., armed assailants, purportedly associated with a Sinaloa cartel faction, raided a gated compound in Concordia, Sinaloa named La Clementina, where Vizsla Silver personnel resided and parked company vehicles.
Around 7:30 a.m. that same day, Osorio Sánchez left his dwelling in Concordia, a municipality approximately 50 kilometers east of Mazatlan, to reach a bus stop. While waiting for his daily commute to his worksite at a tunnel several kilometers to the east, he conversed with his girlfriend over the phone.
During the call, his partner overheard male voices, with one mentioning, “We can fix this,” before the connection abruptly ended. This marked the final conversation between them, based on family accounts and records from the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Federal authorities located Osorio Sánchez’s body, a native of Taxiaco, Oaxaca, about two weeks later. He was buried alongside other bodies in a clandestine grave in El Verde, a village around 19 km northwest of Concordia, identified as “Grave 2” in investigative documents obtained by CBC News. His body was marked with the label “Indicio C” for identification among the other bodies found in the same vicinity on Feb. 6.
Autopsies revealed that Osorio Sánchez succumbed to a gunshot wound to the head’s upper right side, with severe blunt-force injuries preceding his demise. Additionally, a suspected gunshot wound was observed on his right jaw without an exit point.
López expressed profound devastation as Osorio Sánchez was the eldest of three siblings.
The El Verde graves also contained the remains of nine of the Vizsla Silver workers kidnapped earlier. Some bodies exhibited similar indicators of blunt-force trauma and head wounds caused by gunshots, as per information acquired by CBC News.
The whereabouts of the tenth abducted Vizsla Silver worker, Francisco Antonio Esparza Yáñez, who oversaw community relations, remain unknown.
Maurillo Santiago, a leading attorney with the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Council for Indigenous Peoples in Oaxaca, noted that distinct branches of the federal Attorney General’s Office are handling Osorio Sánchez’s case and the Vizsla Silver workers’ investigation. Santiago, representing the family, mentioned that the forced disappearances unit manages Osorio Sánchez’s case, while the organized crime division oversees the Vizsla Silver case.
However, the Attorney General’s Office did not respond to CBC News’ request for comment.
Yetzy Santiago Lorenzo, an attorney with the same human rights organization handling the case, highlighted lingering uncertainties around the discovery of the clandestine graves, the responsible party, and the identities of those interred with Osorio S ánchez.
She emphasized the opaque nature of the situation, questioning whether federal and state authorities or civilian groups searching for missing persons uncovered the graves in El Verde. Santiago Lorenzo remarked on the peculiar separation of Pablo’s investigation from the group’s case, creating an insurmountable gap.
Osorio Sánchez and the Vizsla Silver workers fell victim to the ongoing civil strife within the Sinaloa cartel between factions loyal to El Chapo’s sons and El Mayo Zambada’s son. The conflict intensified after El Chapo’s son tricked El Mayo into a 2024 meeting for abduction, escalating the violence across the state.
Mexican federal authorities attributed the abductions and killings of Vizsla Silver workers to a cell associated with the La Chapiza faction within the cartel.
In June, Gabriel Nicolás “El Gabito, El 80” Martínez Larios, a local leader aligned with La Chapiza, was arrested in connection with the Vizsla Silver kidnapping. Subsequently, Angel Gabriel, known as “El Tronco,” and Milton Yair, along with eleven others, including two minors linked to the La Chapiza cell, were detained.
According to reports, Gabriel and Yair were part of a La Chapiza commando
