Overview

Lagos de Moreno Incident or Los 5 Jóvenes De Lagos De Moreno in Spanish (The Five Young Men From Lagos de Moreno in English), refers to an incident that occurred at the Lagos de Moreno in Jalisco, México in which five young men, between the ages of 19 and 22, were last seen on the night of August 11th, 2023. An NSFW gore video went viral on social media showing the missing young men fighting to their deaths following the orders of alleged hitmen from the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG). The case was widely spread on social media and caused outrage all over México and other Latin American countries.

Background

According to the Jalisco Police Department,^[1] on August 11th, 2023, five young men disappeared aboard two vehicles while they were on their way to meet a sixth friend on Lagos de Moreno in Jalisco, México. Roberto Olmeda Cuéllar, Diego Lara Santoyo, Uriel Galván, Jaime Adolfo Martínez Miranda and Dante Hernández make up the group of people whose disappearance has caused concern and indignation in Mexico (shown below).

On August 13th, the case publicly escalated to social media, as the reasons for the disappearance were still unknown at the time. Authorities also found one of the cars used by the group.^[2]

Developments

Five days after the group's disappearance, on August 15th, 2023, The Jalisco Police Department announced the discovery of human remains inside a burned vehicle, apparently belonging to one of the young men who disappeared in Lagos de Moreno.^[3] That same day, the Twitter^[4] page porktendencia posted a series of pictures showing the burned car (shown below), which garnered over 550 likes and 39 retweets in a day.

Lagos De Moreno Brutal Video

On the same day the burned vehicle was found, August 15th, 2023, relatives of the disappeared were shown a video in which five people appear gagged and beaten. The families then said that there is a high probability that it is the young people missing who appear in the images.^[5]

On August 16th, the YouTube^[6] channel ImagenNoticias posted a video in Spanish explaining the incident and showing some of the brutal scenes in which one of the boys was forced to kill one of his friends. The video (shown below) has garnered over 192,000 views and 2,200 likes in 12 hours.

The video features a text written over the image that says “Puro MZ,” which, according to local news,^[7] is an apparent reference to El Mayo Zambada, the leader of a faction of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Online Reactions

Online, the incident became a trending topic all over Latin American countries, as the brutality of the case shocked netizens. For instance, Mexicans were outraged at their president López Obrador's reaction when he was questioned about the missing younger men case.

On August 16th, 2023, the official Twitter^[8] account of the Mexican newspaper El Universal (@El_Universal_Mx) posted the moment Obrador avoids the journalists' questions (shown below), which received more than 364,000 views and 3,000 likes in two hours.

🔴 Con un “no oigo”, el presidente López Obrador evitó hablar en su conferencia mañanera sobre la desaparición de cinco jóvenes en Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco.Video: Especial pic.twitter.com/nNLSzuahAw

— El Universal (@El_Universal_Mx) August 16, 2023

On August 15th, Twitter^[9] user @Marcela_Feraud tweeted about President López Obrador saying, "While @lopezobrador_ is campaigning, attacking opponents and supporting their crown cap" other cases of violence happened in Mexico. The post (shown below) amassed over 4,900 likes and 3,200 retweets in a day.

Search Interest

External References