Mothers in Mexico demand justice and visibility for disappeared family members

MEXICO CITY (CN) — On the morning of May 10, hundreds of mothers and family members closed off Reforma Avenue in their march towards the National Palace in Mexico City, demanding justice and aid in the search for their missing family members.

"We are not one, we are not 100, goddamn government, count us well," the marchers chanted as they walked down Reforma Avenue, demanding that authorities stop impeding their search.

The march was organized by dozens of loosely connected female-led search groups called "Searching Mothers" who try to find their missing family members despite a lack of government help or funding.

Much of their work is done in rural parts of the country where there are known to be mass graves, or by spreading information through missing person signs on the internet or the street and pressuring the government to aid in their search, whether through justice or finding their loved ones alive.

"This is not a day off, this is a day of protest," the marchers chanted on their way to the National Palace.

One of these marchers, Reyna Manzano has been searching for her sister, Veronica Manzano, since who disappeared in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico on Feb. 28, 2023, when she went to the pharmacy to buy medicine one night and never returned. Manzano said the local Huixquilucan authorities do not help her in her search even though there is camera footage from a local store the night of her disappearance.

Her sister's disappearance has not been solved nor has there been any effort to figure out where she is, Manzano said.

Magda Veronica, part of a search group called Voice and Dignity for Our Own, is looking for her 17-year-old daughter, who disappeared on March 2, 2023, from Tamuín, San Luis Potosi.

"Our objective as a group is to find our family members alive," Veronica said outside the National Palace where the marchers congregated with signs and photos of their loved ones.

According to the Mexican government's National Registry of the Disappeared, there are currently 116,298 people in the country "missing and unaccounted for."

More than 70% are from the last 10 years.

Mexico's General Law on Disappearances — enacted in 2017 under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto — implemented several new protocols, including a National Search System and National Search Commission, to aid families in their search for missing family members.

Though the protocols are in place, the registry does not classify the majority of the missing as victims of a crime, thus hindering any proper legal investigation or case to be opened on their behalf.

According to a 2021 Washington Office on Latin America report, "of the more than 23,000 people disappeared between 2018 and 2021 ... less than a third were recognized as victims of any specific crime in the registry and far fewer were recognized as victims of crimes defined in the General Law against disappearances."

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been criticized for downplaying the number of disappearances.

During a pre-recorded video during his morning press conference on May 8, he accused journalists and volunteer searchers for the deceased who found an apparent mass grave in Mexico City of suffering a "delirium of necrophilia."

López Obrador's government released its own census in December 2023, the "Public Version for Consultation" as part of the National Registry of the Disappeared, which minimized the nearly 110,000 disappeared people at the time to 12,377 people.

"I am here to show the government how many are missing those they love. To show them that their records are not right," marcher Suri Bahena said.

The census was heavily criticized due to its lack of oversight and untrained staff who conducted the census using questionable methodology. Detractors say the government's impunity and minimization of the disappearance crisis not only hinders justice and the locating of family members, but leaves the searching mothers vulnerable to violent attack.

In 2022 alone, five searching mothers like the ones who marched today were murdered: Teresa Magueyal of the search group A Promise to Keep; María del Carmen Vázquez, searching for her son who disappeared in June of 2022; Blanca Esmeralda Gallardo of The Voice of the Disappeared; Lilián Rosario Rodríguez Barraza of Hearts Without Justice; Ana Luisa Garduño, who was searching for her daughter, Ana Karen Huicochea, who disappeared in 2012; and Gladys Aranza Ramos of United Mothers and Warriors of Sonora.

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