Search for Mexico’s disappeared more dangerous than ever

Searchers who fail to take their safety into account are likely to be reminded of it by actors looking to stop them from digging. Only a couple of the more than a dozen searchers interviewed by Courthouse News confessed to having no fear in their search. All others expressed fear and described how it effects them. 

“You lose your life once your children disappear,” Flores said. “And you keep suffering since your search receives no support from authorities. You’re always looking out for yourself and don’t even know whom to protect yourself from, constantly feeling your life is at risk.”

Some searchers succumb to this fear piled on top of the pain of their loss and the effects on their remaining family members. Some report family conflicts arising from searchers dedicating their lives to the member they lost. For some, it is too much. Others use that fear as a driving force for what they call a national movement.

“The fear is there, and it always will be, but as time goes by, it changes as you process it,” said González. At one point, it paralyzed her search for Juan. “But you end up altering the fear, transforming it to the point — not to where you no longer fear for yourself and those close to you — but it becomes something that moves you.”

While searchers report a wide range of threats to their safety and varying reactions to the fear those threats cause, their universal grievance continues to be the lack of a tangible response to the problem by authorities.

One of several factors putting searchers at risk is the federal government’s failure to recognize them as human rights defenders, according to Mónica Meltis, director of the feminist human rights organization Data Cívica. 

“And it’s all because there is a lack of data,” she said in an interview. 

Meltis pointed to crime databases, such as that of homicides, which have a label for victims who were human rights defenders, “but in the case of searchers, it is very hard to know based on the government’s data,” she said. 

The National Search Commission, the federal agency tasked with finding and identifying disappeared persons — and protecting their surviving families — did not respond to a request for an interview. 

To fill that void, Data Cívica has designed a bot to search social media posts for disappearances, attacks and murders of searchers, but their research will take time to gather and analyze the data. 

While it has ceded its spot at the top of the list of Mexico’s most violent states to others like Michoacán, Zacatecas and Baja California, the state of Sinaloa has long been plagued by the scourge of disappearances. In May 2022, it became the first in Mexico to establish a state-level Institute for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists. Veracruz has a similar institute, but only for journalists.

The institute has compiled and mapped out data from civil society groups on homicides and attacks on activists and journalists dating back to 1897, and it is working on risk maps that highlight areas in the state that present a security threat to people in these groups. 

The institute’s director Jhenny Bernal Arellano said they are conducting a diagnosis of the situation for “indirect victims of enforced disappearance,” like searching families. Similar to Data Cívica’s project, it is in its initial stages and will take some time to obtain actionable data. Nor will the task be easy.

“We knew, of course, when we started that there was a latent risk situation for journalists and activists in Sinaloa since they put themselves on display and are easily identifiable,” Bernal said in an interview. “But we did not expect the number of cases from August 2022 to date would be so high.”

The institute has attended to 41 cases of journalists, activists and their families since it started its work. 

Despite the Sisyphean task before her, Bernal said she is invested in implementing a “state public policy that is preventive and respectful of the rights of journalists and human rights defenders.”

Furthermore, she aims to correct at the state level the federal government’s failure to recognize searchers as human rights defenders. 

“They feel disillusioned, neglected by authorities, and that was something we had to deal with at the beginning, earning their trust,” Bernal said. “But we’re working to earn it and want them to know that they have an ally in the institute.”

According to Meltis of Data Cívica, however, even if those in Sinaloa can find governmental support and recognition of their situation, one last hurdle often remains for searchers: themselves.

“It’s hard for them to put themselves in the place of victims when the main victim is the one they’re searching for,” she said, adding that the perception of searchers — especially the mothers — as people of incredible emotional fortitude can contribute to this as well. 

“Their strength is impressive — they are the moral reserve of this country — but the social perception of their strength can also be one of the factors that makes it that much more difficult to recognize themselves as something else besides that strength and the hope to find their loved ones.”

Saturday night. The stage was set. Daft Punk played as those who arrived on time waited for the classically Mexican late start. A photo exposition in the foyer featured shots of mermaids floating among water trash, flopped onto the wet counters of a fish market: the artist's comment on women's objectified, disposable place in Mexican society.

The concert and dance show was for the benefit of Una Luz en el Camino (A Light in the Path), a collective of searchers founded in Mexico City by Jacqueline Palmeros after her daughter Jael Monserrat disappeared in July 2020. 

“We searchers have been abandoned by the state,” she told a crowd of around 50 who had come out to support her cause. “I don’t know if my treasure — that’s what we call them, our treasures — is alive or dead, but I do know that the state is negligent in this.”

The story of Jael Monserrat’s disappearance and Palmeros’ search for her serves as a case study for how violence and impunity have spread and intensified during López Obrador’s term. 

Once considered insulated from the narco-violence of northern states, the capital has seen a more than 330% rise in disappearances under the president’s watch. During his term, more than 8,100 people have been reported missing, with over 3,700 unaccounted for. 

Those numbers tower over the same stats from Dec. 11, 2006 — the day Calderón declared war on Mexico’s drug cartels — to Nov. 30, 2018 — the day before López Obrador’s term began: a total of 3,780 reported disappearances in those 12 years, and just 873 of those cases remain cold. 

In an interview after her speech, Palmeros spoke of the perilous nature of her search for Jael Monserrat. 

“It has been constant harassment and threats,” she said. Not long after she founded her collective, a man on a motorcycle shot up her house while she was home. Fortunately, she was not hurt. 

“Your safety becomes more and more at risk,” she said, joining other searchers in criticizing a federal protection mechanism for journalists and activists for its inadequacy. For most who solicit protection, all they receive is a panic button app that is of little use in the middle of a firefight, in remote areas without cell service or after one has already been kidnapped.

“The mechanism takes you in and ties you to them so that they’ve got you in their sights,” she said. “Really, the day they want to kill you, they’re going to do it.”

The office of the federal protection mechanism did not respond to a request for an interview by the time of publication. 

Bernal said that the Sinaloa protection institute offers preventative services like police patrols and escorts, video surveillance and more, but it will take some time to see if these actions succeed.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s searchers aren’t waiting around for a governmental change. They are organizing concerts, art auctions and other social functions to raise funds to continue their digging with or without the help of the authorities. 

In addition to soliciting donations at the Saturday night show, Palmeros and her fellow searching mothers sold folk art, snacks and water bottles, the labels removed and replaced by stickers bearing the faces of people they haven’t seen in a very long time. 

Alongside each photo is one of the more than 112,000 heartbreaking reasons for the event: “Jael Monserrat Uribe Palmeros, Disappeared July 24, 2020, in Iztapalapa, Mexico City.”

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