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Half a dozen years back, Guadalupe Ayala was left distraught after her son aged 25, Alfredo Campos, was taken from his home in the town of Tlajomulco. His case contributed one more entry to the registry of more than 15,000 people recorded as missing in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. In the state capital, Guadalajara, a major traffic junction plastered with posters of the disappeared has been renamed the “roundabout of the disappeared”.

Estimates indicate more than 100,000 missing people in the country – one of the tragic consequences of the nation’s deadly drug crisis, with the majority of those missing thought to have been taken by organised crime groups and drug cartels. The total is likely even higher as many people are never officially reported due to concerns about retaliation.

One of the things that made me cry most was when it said he had been exposed to the elements, especially to the cold

Learning the outcome of disappeared family members can be filled with risk, with relatives threatened or killed for trying to find their loved ones. They can also find themselves relying on contact with organised crime groups for tip-offs about locations where opposing factions have interred remains.

In an initiative to accelerate the investigations and reduce the risks for mothers such as Ayala, local volunteer groups and government agencies have initiated a new project to help locate grave locations, including using pigs to replicate how plant life develops on burial sites.

Dozens of swine bodies are being interred in sixteen separate areas on the campus of Guadalajara University – each simulating a distinct scenario in which a real body might have been interred, such as wrapped in a blanket, cut into pieces, cremated or covered with rocks. Two plots have been kept vacant for reference purposes.

Pigs are used due to their biological resemblance to people in terms of anatomy, genetic makeup and physiology. Researchers have already noticed differences in the growth of plants across the burial plots, with vegetation appearing straight away above the swine covered in cloth.

“Despite the soil being arid, the fabric holds moisture,” says a researcher named Tunarui Chávez Gonzalez, from the Jalisco Search Commission, a state agency that coordinates search efforts with relatives and is running the Found project with collectives of mothers and local and international universities.

At other project sites, the scientists have discovered depressed soil functions as a barrier, capturing more water and resulting in enhanced vegetation, with Gonzalez saying they had identified fifteen distinct plant species that are associated with the existence of remains.

As well as the pig burial sites, the agency is testing with subsurface imaging tools such as electrical resistivity tomography, which can create images of the underground earth by measuring variations in voltage, and advanced aerial cameras, which can identify compounds in the earth that frequently signal the presence of decomposing remains, such as specific chemical elements.

The previous year, during a search of an abandoned house in the Zapopan municipality, where criminal elements had been known to sell drugs, a mothers’ collective had discovered about four bags with remains. The employment of an electrical detection tool allowed the search agency to locate twenty-nine additional sacks and three complete corpses within a few hours.

Certain parental search teams have learned that the cartels often dig graves near two specific trees: sweet acacia trees and mesquites. These plants are preferred because they provide shade while digging graves but their taproots grow primarily downward, avoiding thick roots that might obstruct the excavation.

By employing artificial intelligence and drone flights, scientists currently think they can use such insights to help prioritise search areas and speed up the likely finding of clandestine graves.

For Ayala, the quest to find her disappeared child was concluded rapidly but heartbreaking end, aided by the Fundej collective, a team of community parents and helpers searching for missing children.

They discovered four arms, with forensic tests showing that one belonged to her son, followed by more body parts over the following months.

“Upon locating the individual and discover them dismembered in that manner, that’s the worst nightmare. You get into your head many things,” says Ayala. “You wonder how he was tortured, what his final moments were like?”

The following autopsy document was a traumatic read. “I couldn't stop weeping when going through it,” she said.

“One of the things that made me cry most was when it said that he had been exposed to the elements, particularly to low temperatures, because it was evident in his organs. Prior to his death, he was extremely chilled.”

While applauding the recent advances speeding up the search for the disappeared, a state commissioner, accepts that it does not solve the nation's narcotics problem.

“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 knowledge to find those who do disappear as soon as possible.”