The on-site management of a Canadian mining company in Mexico whose workers were killed earlier this year had allegedly established some level of co-ordination with an organized armed group in the region, according to a former employee and two ex-contractors.
Mexican federal authorities say a suspected faction of the Sinaloa cartel, a transnational drug trafficking organization, killed five of 10 Mexican workers kidnapped from Vancouver-based Vizsla Silver Corp.’s residential facilities on Jan. 23. The five other workers remain officially missing.
The group was abducted from a gated compound in the urban centre of Concordia, a municipality that sits about 50 kilometres east of the coastal city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa.
Vizsla Silver Corp has been conducting exploration work across 35,000 hectares in a remote and mountainous area it called the Panuco Project, which spread roughly 25 kilometres east of Concordia’s urban centre.
While Mexican authorities occasionally entered the region on patrols, the territory was almost completely controlled by an organized armed group, say the former employee and two contractors. They did not indicate which group the armed men belonged to.
The armed group piloted drones while rifle-wielding men, on the back of pickup trucks, roamed the area during the day, said the former Panuco Project workers. Armour-plated, tank-like vehicles, called monsters, rolled during the night along roads that cut through Vizsla Corp.’s exploration areas, they said.
“This region was a war zone … there were two groups, maybe even more, and there was conflict between them,” said the former Vizsla Silver employee.
Due to security concerns, CBC News agreed to not reveal the names of the individuals or specific dates when they worked in Vizsla Silver’s operations. All three worked on the company’s Panuco Project throughout 2025.
Vizsla Silver’s response to incident
“Vizsla Silver prioritizes the safety and security of its people and categorically denies allegations to the contrary you have attributed to former workers,” said the company, in an emailed statement sent to CBC News on Wednesday afternoon.
“We are carefully reviewing the circumstances behind the recent tragic events and are cooperating fully with investigations led by Mexican authorities.”
Vizsla said in an earlier statement that its security plans were “informed by ongoing monitoring and intelligence” while “guided by industry best practices and international experts.” The company said it has “not received a single threat” and “has never been extorted or paid extortion” to any group.
Vizsla Silver said it also “received no ransom demand following the kidnapping.”
Sinaloa cartel civil war
Experts have told CBC News that this region of Sinaloa has been under cartel control for decades. The Sinaloa cartel, a federation of regional organized crime groups, has fragmented into a civil war that has left thousands dead and missing across the state over the past 18 months.
The fault lines of this conflict, which pits neighbouring and once allied armed groups against each other, also runs through the territory where Vizsla Silver operated.
The civil war began in September 2024, after one of Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán’s sons betrayed Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada García and handed him over to U.S. authorities in July of the same year.
El Mayo once co-led the Sinaloa cartel with El Chapo. Now, those loyal to El Chapo’s sons, called Los Chapitos, and those loyal to El Mayo’s son, called La Mayiza, are engaged in a brutal war.
Mexican authorities say Los Chapitos kidnapped Vizsla Silver’s workers.
Workers say they were told ‘there’s no problem’
As the security situation in Vizsla Silver’s exploration zone deteriorated throughout 2025, on-site management would tell the concerned workforce that there was nothing to fear because everything had been worked out with the armed men, according to the three former Panuco Project workers.
“They would tell us, ‘everything is under control, there’s no problem,'” said the former Vizsla Silver employee.
At one point, on-site company management told workers to stop wearing orange vests and helmets and to instead sport yellow vests and helmets so the armed men who patrolled the territory would know they were with Vizsla Silver, said one former contractor.
“They told us that an opposing [armed group] had stolen vests and had infiltrated the area and the vests were orange. That’s why they told us to wear the yellow vests,” said the former contractor.
Workers were also advised to show their work-related identification if they were ever confronted by the armed men so they would be allowed to carry on with their labour, according to the former Vizsla Silver employee.
“Show your credentials and [the armed men] won’t do anything. With the vest you are wearing, they won’t do anything to you. That’s what they told us,” said the former employee.
Vizsla Sliver’s on-site management also dismissed, downplayed or mocked concerns from workers, said the former Panuco Project workers.
“I saw it and I heard it. I also heard it from other workers who would talk to me and tell me,” said the former employee.
“Yes, [management] would ridicule, they would ridicule [workers who complained].”
On-site managers would claim workers were lying, that the gunfire they heard while out in the field didn’t really happen and it was all made up because they were lazy and didn’t want to work, the former Panuco Project workers said.
But, as the year progressed, the security situation continued to deteriorate, they said.
At one point in June 2025, armed men commandeered two Vizsla Silver pickup trucks and used them for unknown purposes, said the former employee. The trucks had GPS tracking devices and company security officers watched the vehicles move through an area south of the mine’s operations, he said.
“The company never wanted to stop [operations],” said one of the former contractors.
Companies face presence of organized crime in Mexico: expert
It’s an open secret that mining companies are sometimes faced with organized criminal groups in certain parts of Mexico and must find a way to deal with them if they want to operate, said David Saucedo, a corporate security consultant based in Mexico City.
“It’s not to justify those companies, but I understand it. They’ve invested in the concession, in contractors, in the purchase of machinery and the creation of infrastructure,” said Suacedo.
“Suddenly a criminal group appears and tries to stop or present obstacles. So, some mining companies negotiate with these criminal groups.”
Vizsla Silver denies it has ever dealt with criminal groups.
The former Panuco Project workers told CBC News they’ve all worked for mining operations in different parts of Mexico that also faced the heavy presence of organized crime groups.
In their experience, in these other projects, the workers said they would not face repercussions from management if they refused to enter a certain area over the sound of gunfire or the presence of armed groups.
“In this case with my co-workers and myself, we didn’t feel supported by Vizsla,” said the former employee.
Vizla Silver, which started work in the region in 2019, says it has discovered high-grade silver deposits that, once mined, would put the company among the world’s top silver producers, reaping billions of dollars in yearly profit.
