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Six years ago, a mother named Guadalupe Ayala was left distraught after her son aged 25, Alfredo Ezequiel Campos, was abducted from his residence in the town of Tlajomulco. His disappearance contributed one more entry to the registry of more than 15,000 people officially listed as disappeared in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. In the state capital, Guadalajara, a key intersection covered in flyers of the disappeared has been renamed the “circle of the missing”.

Estimates indicate more than 100,000 missing people in Mexico – a devastating outcome of the country's violent narcotics war, with the majority of those missing believed to be abducted by criminal organizations and drug cartels. The total is likely even higher as many people are not reported missing due to concerns about retaliation.

Among the aspects that caused me the most tears was when it said he had been left out in the open, especially to the cold

Discovering the fate of missing loved ones can be fraught with danger, with relatives threatened or killed for attempting to locate their loved ones. They can also find themselves relying on contact with organised crime groups for tip-offs about locations where opposing factions have buried bodies.

In an initiative to accelerate the searches and reduce the risks for mothers such as Ayala, community volunteer organizations and government agencies have initiated a new project to help locate burial sites, including employing swine to replicate how vegetation grows on interment spots.

Scores of pig carcasses are being interred in sixteen separate areas on the grounds of the University of Guadalajara – each simulating a distinct scenario in which a human remains might have been interred, such as wrapped in a blanket, dismembered, cremated or covered with rocks. A couple of areas have been left empty for comparison.

Swine are employed due to their similarity to humans in terms of bodily structure, genetic makeup and physiology. Researchers have already noticed variations in development of plants across the grave sites, with vegetation appearing straight away above the pigs wrapped in blankets.

“Despite the soil being arid, the blanket retains water,” says Tunarui Roberto Chávez Gonzalez, from the Jalisco Search Commission, a government body that coordinates search efforts with family members and is running the Found project with collectives of mothers and local and international universities.

At additional research locations, the researchers have found depressed soil functions as a barrier, trapping additional moisture and leading to more growth, with Gonzalez saying they had recorded 15 different plants that correspond to the existence of remains.

In addition to the swine graves, the commission is experimenting with geophysical technology such as electrical resistance mapping, which can create images of the soil below the surface by measuring variations in voltage, and advanced aerial cameras, which can identify compounds in the soil that frequently signal the existence of decaying bodies, such as nitrogen and potassium.

The previous year, during a search of an abandoned house in the Zapopan municipality, where crime groups had been reported to deal narcotics, a group of mothers had discovered about four bags with human parts. The use of an electrical resistance device enabled the Jalisco Search Commission to locate twenty-nine additional sacks and three full bodies within a few hours.

Some mothers’ search groups have discovered that the cartels often dig graves near two specific trees: huisaches and mesquites. These plants are preferred because they provide shade while digging graves but their main roots grow straight down, avoiding thick roots that might hinder the digging.

Through the use of artificial intelligence and aerial surveys, scientists currently think they can apply these findings to help prioritise search areas and accelerate the potential discovery of clandestine graves.

For Ayala, the quest to find her disappeared child was concluded rapidly but tragic conclusion, assisted by the Fundej organization, a team of community parents and helpers looking for missing children.

They found four limbs, with forensic tests confirming one was from her child, followed by more body parts over the following months.

“Upon locating the individual and find them segmented like that, that’s the most terrible dream. You get into your head many things,” says Ayala. “You question how he suffered, what his final moments were like?”

The subsequent coroner’s report was a distressing perusal. “I couldn't stop weeping when going through it,” she said.

“One of the things that made me cry most was when it stated he was left unprotected to the environment, especially to cold, because it was evident in his organs. Before he died, he was very cold.”

While welcoming the new innovations speeding up the search for the missing, Víctor Hugo Ávila Barrientos, accepts that it does not solve Mexico’s drug crisis.

“Even if I had a thousand searchers, it’s going to keep growing if we don’t prevent [deaths from happening]. But in the meantime,” he says, “we aim to build the expertise to find those who do disappear as soon as possible.”