Mexico makes arrests after Canadian Silver miner’s workers found dead
Mexican authorities said they arrested four suspects linked to the kidnapping of miners from Canada’s Vizsla Silver Corp. Panuco project east of the Pacific Coast city of Mazatlan in January.
The Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that five of Vizsla’s workers had been found dead, after 10 people were abducted from the project, and officials were working to identify another five bodies. Mexico’s Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said that the miners could have been mistaken for part of a criminal group in Sinaloa State.
“In the army’s arrest of the four people presumably responsible for the illegal kidnapping, they mentioned that they confused them, according to early statements, with members of a rival group,” Garcia Harfuch said at a press briefing Tuesday.
The four suspects are part of the criminal group Los Chapitos, which has an ongoing feud with another group known as Los Mayos, Garcia Harfuch said.
Los Chapitos is considered part of the Sinaloa Cartel and led by the sons of Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, the drug trafficker imprisoned in the US. Los Chapitos control drug trafficking in much of western Mexico, including of fentanyl and cocaine.
The Mexican government has been trying to reduce violence in the state since 2024, when a battle between warring factions of the Sinaloa Cartel led to an increase in homicides after the capture of the cartel’s co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Last month, as part of efforts to quell the violence, the government deployed 1,600 more members of the military to the state.
Vancouver-based Vizsla had earlier said that the families of the missing employees informed the company that their relatives had been found dead.
Shares in the company extended declines Tuesday, after closing 12% lower in Toronto on Monday.
The developer suspended operations at the project in January, after reporting that 10 people had been taken from the site in Concordia in Sinaloa state. Vizsla said information about the incident was limited, and that it had engaged crisis management and security response teams.
Vizsla is preparing to start construction at Panuco later this year, and expects to start producing silver in the second half of 2027. The project has 31.4 million ounces of silver equivalent in proven reserves, according to the company.
(By Sybilla Gross and Maya Averbuch)
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