On Wednesday, mothers of some of the 111,000 individuals who have vanished in Mexico due to decades of violence protested and demanded that the government do more to find their loved ones.
The majority of individuals reported missing are thought to have been kidnapped or taken hostage by drug gangs, who then buried or burnt their victims’ bodies.
Some of the demonstrators blocking Mexico City’s major thoroughfare were also against what appeared to be a government effort to downplay the issue.
Where are they? were the chants of about 200 demonstrators, practically all of them were women. What happened to our kids?
One of the marchers, Edith Pérez Rodriguez, wore a T-shirt with pictures of her two kids, José Arturo Domnguez Pérez and Alexis. In San Luis Potosi, a state in northern Mexico, they mysteriously disappeared ten years ago.
Police and prosecutors are unable to conduct the simplest of searches due to a lack of resources and manpower. As a result, volunteer groups of mothers often walk through areas where bodies are believed to have been dumped while poking long steel rods into the ground to detect the odor of corpses.
Nobody will look for our children if we don’t, said Pérez Rodrguez.
The number of people reported missing, according to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been exaggerated, and many may have gone home without informing the authorities. Military and unqualified civilian workers working as part of a large door-to-door campaign he has started are asking neighbors if their missing relatives have returned and checked their identities against vaccination lists.
The search for the missing, or at least their remains, according to activists, would be a better use of time and resources.
Pérez Rodrguez asked, “What are they going to do?” saying that each agent must handle roughly 250 cases of missing persons, leaving them no time to conduct a thorough investigation.
We are here to inform the president that these data are not overblown, she continued. She pointed to the dozens of other protesting mothers and added, “This is the reality.
Numerous other Mexican cities also organized similar marches.
David Guerrero, who vanished in San Luis Potosi on January 13, 2022, has been sought after by Irma Guerrero. She claimed that she has received “nothing, not from anyone” in the way of assistance since that time.
Guerrero said that she didn’t care about Karla Quintana, Mexico’s top search official, quitting last week. “No one from the government has assisted us,”
Only the evil people are aware, and they are not on our side, Guerrero claimed.
Quintana, who apparently objected to sending unqualified staff around to interview victims’ families, did not provide an explanation for her resignation. According to advocates, such inquiries into already traumatized families could be harmful.
There is little doubt that some of the people missing may have already returned. However, many also think that a sizable number of missing people in Mexico’s most violent areas may not have been reported by their relatives, either out of mistrust of the government or out of fear of retaliation.
This mistrust is pervasive.
Esteban Martinez Cervantes, who also vanished in San Luis Potosi in July 2020, is still missing, and Jessica Martinez Cervantes is still seeking for him.
When asked what assistance she had received from the government, she replied, “Nothing, absolutely nothing.