Alert in Sinaloa for the kidnapping of 10 employees of a Canadian mining company
The victims are engineers and technical staff who work for the Canadian mining company Vizsla Silver and were kidnapped in the municipality of Concordia
Violence in the state of Sinaloa continues to rise, and an example of this is the recent kidnapping of 10 employees of a Canadian mining company in the municipality of Concordia.
According to reports released by relatives of the victims and local media such as the weekly Rio Doce, On January 23, the victims were forcibly abducted from a housing development that the mining company had reportedly rented to house its staff. The victims are engineers and technical personnel who work for the Canadian mining company Vizsla Silver, according to reports. The Mexican Association of Mining, Metallurgical, and Geological Engineers expressed concern and called on authorities to intervene immediately to guarantee the workers' safe return. "We express our deep concern over the illegal deprivation of liberty, by unknown individuals, of 10 professionals in the mining industry who performed their work honestly in the municipality of Concordia, Sinaloa," the association stated in a press release. Among those identified as missing are Saul Alberto Ochoa Perez, 40 years old, originally from Chihuahua; Antonio Esparza, who served as community relations manager for Vizsla Silver; Jose Castaneda, geologist; Antonio Jimenez, operational security coordinator; Antonio de la O, environmental supervisor; as well as security guards Javier Vargas and Javier Valdez, according to information shared on digital platforms and official missing person reports. According to family testimonies, at least seven of the abducted workers are from Hermosillo, Sonora, and traveled to Concordia for work related to a project being developed by Vizsla Silver in the region. The state has been experiencing a profound crisis of violence since the end of 2024 due to an internal struggle between factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. In fact, Sinaloa ended 2025 as the year with the most disappearances in its history, with 2,208 reported cases.According to information from the State Commission for the Search of Disappeared Persons.
The municipality of Concordia, in particular, registered a rate of 96.4 disappearances per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest among all the municipalities in the state.