MEXICO
Evil, and Shame
Lucía vowed to never give up, determined to find the remains of her son, who disappeared in 2013 in Veracruz, Mexico, vanishing like so many Mexicans over the past six years.
This mother, however, is now a founding member of Colectivo Solecito, a group of people searching for loved ones who lie in clandestine graves, explained openDemocracy.
Her son is one of the 73,000 Mexicans who have disappeared without explanation since an epidemic of these incidents started 14 years ago, the Washington Post reported. Hundreds of Americans are among the missing.
“Evil is a strong word, but nothing milder seems commensurate with the colossal weight of the suffering of these families, who cannot escape the excruciating psychological torture that comes from not knowing where their missing loved ones are,” wrote Human Rights Watch.
The crisis echoes the Cold War era of disappearances under American-supported rightwing governments in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and other countries. But their rate has picked up under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftwing leader who took office in 2018 pledging a host of reforms, including an end to the disappearances.
Still, lawlessness remains a major reason why Mexicans still opt to migrate north to the US. “A continuing wave of assassinations, disappearances, enforced disappearances and internal displacements…shows how criminal violence has morphed into local armed conflicts of which civilians are the main victims,” the New Humanitarian wrote, citing a report by the International Crisis Group.
Mexicans like Lucía are forming activist groups because they feel as if the government has lost the capacity or the will to help, Foreign Policy magazine noted. Murders that have been investigated tend to illustrate collusion between security forces – from the military to federal to local law enforcement – and organized crime.
In one famous incident, 43 students disappeared from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014. Mexican investigators have some leads in the case but officials suspected of being involved have yet to be apprehended, Reuters wrote.
Still, there is new hope: On Saturday, the government issued 25 arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police force in relation to the abduction and disappearance of the students, Al Jazeera reported. The highest-ranking official wanted in the case is Tomas Zeron, who at the time of the abduction was the head of the federal investigation agency. He is being sought on charges of torture and covering up forced disappearances.
The loved ones of those students might be the rare examples of those getting closure – and justice.
For example, Amnesty International detailed a case where Mexican soldiers in pursuit of gangsters shot and killed prisoners of those gangsters. In cases like these, no one is ever punished. Meanwhile, families receive little or no notice of the deaths and must investigate themselves.
Obrador has proposed inviting the United Nations into Mexico to help with the investigations, the Associated Press reported. But it’s not clear if they will help much, or can.
