How Mexico disappears the missing
by Emiliano Polo.
Mother’s Day in Mexico has increasingly become a day of protest for women whose children have disappeared in the context of a deepening national crisis. This year, demonstrations in cities such as Mexico City and Guadalajara on May 10 demanded both recognition for the search efforts undertaken by families and guarantees for their safety, particularly in light of the growing number of searchers who have been murdered. These protests stressed a disturbing pattern: those who step in to do the work the state has failed to carry out are now being targeted themselves. In reclaiming public space and visibility, these women not only confront institutional abandonment but also redefine courage as a form of political resistance towards a government that promotes impunity to hide its incapacity.
Behind the more visible violence of organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico lies a more profound, less acknowledged crisis. While homicides and cartel-related violence dominate headlines, the fate of over 125,287 missing persons—according to the Ministry of the Interior’s registry—remains unknown. The impunity around the tragedy results from both deliberate government action and inaction.
The Mexican government has thoroughly undermined its own capacity to respond to this crisis by slashing budgets, weakening judicial and investigative institutions, and manipulating official databases to obscure the exact scale of the missing persons crisis. The Office of the Attorney General, for example, has ignored its legal responsibilities, particularly in identifying the thousands of bodies buried in clandestine graves and in establishing a comprehensive National Program of Exhumations.
Morena reacts furiously to UN probe into forced disappearances
by Andrew Law.
“There is no forced disappearance in Mexico.”
That was the response from Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum, to news that the UN plans to investigate forced disappearances in the country. More than 124,000 people have disappeared in Mexico.
Sheinbaum’s claim was quickly supported by her Morena Party. Party members in the Senate passed a motion saying the government had no role in the crisis.
But last Friday, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances announced it would launch a formal investigation. Committee President Olivier de Frouville said the inquiry was based on three Articles of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons. According to El Financiero, he made it clear that this “in no way prejudges the Mexican state.” Still, de Frouville added, “We have received information that… provides sufficient grounds to support the belief that enforced disappearances are practiced on a widespread or systemic basis.”
Teuchitlán discovery reignites calls for justice in Jalisco’s botched missing film students case
by Madeleine Wattenbarger.
The discovery of an alleged extermination camp at the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, brought national attention to the crisis of disappearance in the state. Amidst the media storm, families have come forward to denounce the mismanagement of one of the most memorable recent disappearance cases in Jalisco: the three film students who went missing in March 2018.
Salomón Aceves Gastélum, Marco García Avalos and Daniel Díaz García disappeared after filming a school project in Tonalá, part of the Guadalajara metropolitan area. A month later, the Jalisco prosecutor’s office told the media that the young men were kidnapped by a cartel, tortured and their bodies dissolved in acid. The terrifying account sent a shock through Mexico, but seven years later, there is no evidence to support it. Seven years after the boys’ disappearance, the families are demanding that the authorities continue the investigation and look for their sons alive.
“There is no scientific data that indicates that our sons have died,” said Vicky García, Daniel’s mother. Rather, the official narrative - the “historic truth” - justified the authorities’ unwillingness to look for the boys alive.
Sheinbaum reaches for AMLO’s script with Jalisco horror
by David Agren.
As the horror of an extermination camp discovered in Jalisco state hit the national headlines, President Claudia Sheinbaum found a familiar victim: former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, her mentor and predecessor, who routinely floated conspiracies and spoke of campaigns against him amid rising crime and violence.
“Leave him alone,” an annoyed Sheinbaum said at a morning press conference, referring to AMLO and the “narcopresidente” accusation. “All that again against President López Obrador, no, when the state prosecutor’s office had the property guarded.”
Sheinbaum won office promising to construct “the second level” of AMLO’s populist political project, the “fourth transformation.” But she’s already abandoned his stated security policy of “hugs, not bullets,” as she fends off U.S. pressure on fentanyl and migrants.
Misinformation clouds discovery of alleged extermination camp in Jalisco
by Madeleine Wattenbarger.
The news has shaken Mexico. Earlier this month, an anonymous report directed families of disappearance victims to a ranch in the town of Teuchitlán, Jalisco, that the state prosecutor’s office had searched in September.
“When we entered, the door was open,” recounts Norma Ángel, member of the search collective Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco, which received the report. The group began live-streaming what they found: piles of clothing, hundreds of pairs of shoes, pits of ash with burnt bones. “They’re completely incinerated bones, most of them very small. If you touched them, they fell apart.”
The videos went viral. A media firestorm ensued, fueled by anonymous testimonies that describe the Izaguirre Ranch as a training camp where young people were lured by false job offers and hundreds tortured, killed, and incinerated. The image of the hundreds of shoes moved the country. On Saturday, search collectives across Mexico hosted dozens of simultaneous vigils for the presumed victims of Teuchitlán as part of a National Day of Mourning.
