Thousands of individuals participated in protests across Mexico to bring attention to the ongoing issue of enforced disappearances and to demand action from the government. Demonstrations took place in cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Córdoba, where relatives and friends of missing persons, along with human rights activists, voiced calls for justice and urged President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration to assist in locating their loved ones.
Currently, over 130,000 people in Mexico are reported missing, a trend that began in 2007 following the initiation of the “war on drugs” by then-President Felipe Calderón. Many of these disappearances are linked to drug cartels, which reportedly forcibly recruit individuals or murder those who oppose them. Security forces also face allegations of involvement in these incidents.
The widespread nature of the protests, spanning various cities and states, underscores the extensive impact of disappearances on families throughout Mexico. Activists and family members across regions, from Oaxaca in the south to Sonora and Durango in the north, carried placards featuring the faces of the disappeared, demanding greater governmental efforts to resolve the crisis.
In Mexico City, the protests caused major traffic disruptions as demonstrators marched through the city’s main thoroughfares. Many families affected by these disappearances have created search teams known as “buscadores,” who undertake the dangerous task of searching remote areas for mass graves based on information they receive, sometimes from the very cartels implicated in the disappearances.
Notably, after a search group discovered a potential narco-ranch in Jalisco state, several buscadores involved went missing. The State Attorney General’s office later stated there was no evidence of a crematorium at the site, but concerns about the personal safety of these activists remain. The United Nations has described the situation as a significant humanitarian crisis, with the number of disappearances in Mexico surpassing those seen in some of Latin America’s darkest periods, including the civil wars in Guatemala and Argentina.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg4rnr720yo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss