We live in a country where thousands of men, women, girls and boys disappear, where mothers who are looking for them are killed. In total impunity. In such a miserable and unfair country, May 10 is an empty date, a dark day for the mothers and families of more than 112,000 missing persons. The gap is as enormous as the silence of an anesthetized society, incapable of assuming as its own that almost unspeakable loss, that national shame.
Since 2012, families and groups looking for their missing loved ones have given new meaning to Mother’s Day as a day of denunciation and claim, with the National Dignity March. A day when the broken promises of the current government hurt and outrage more. A day when the aridity of the search moves to the center of the country, to its emblematic avenue, to raise our voices and denounce institutionalized violence, the crimes of an ignorant and negligent State, the collusion of officials, the complicity of criminals within and out of government. A day when, with pain and lucidity, they demand Truth and Justice.
Thus, no matter how much the governments and many media endeavor to transform them into numbers that increase day by day, the strong and courageous voices of their mothers and relatives remind us of their names, their faces, their stories: Minerva, disappeared in Oaxaca in 2006 , Jovanna, disappeared in Torreón in 2021, Óscar Arturo, disappeared in Tulum in 2022, Ricardo and Antonio, disappeared in 2023 in Michoacán and Colima. So many and many more: relatives and groups come from Chihuahua, “We are part of the national tragedy”; Tamaulipas and Coahuila; San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato; Jalisco, first place in disappearances; from the State of Mexico and the capital (a city without hope or rights), to march for their loved ones, for all these lives worthy of being sought and mourned, worthy of mourning and mourning.
Blankets, posters and embroidery remind us, seek to remind us that this child, this family, these brothers, these friends, each and every one of them are human beings abandoned by the State, ignored by governments (of any color), hidden by those who should protect them (protect us). They are victims of forced disappearance, of poorly conducted or non-existent investigations, of omission or criminal collusion, and of our own indifference or inability to understand: in a country where people disappear with impunity, no one is safe.
Continuing to believe that only in the north, dominated by organized crime, mass disappearances occur, or that “it” only happens to those who “went in the wrong steps”, is to be fooled by the official discourses that have reiterated that narrative since 2006 by least. As expressed by several mothers in El Ángel last week, the disappearance has become a “humanitarian tragedy that seems to have no end.” It affects people of different ages and origins: it is not even possible to know how many migrants have disappeared because the authorities do not count them. Whether it is nationals or migrants, the government does not seek or investigate, does not even try to recognize and respond to the monstrous dimension of this human rights crisis.
What is most shocking is that not even under a government that promised change can families expect justice. As María Herrera, mother of four disappeared children, expressed courageously and firmly, despite the president’s promises (in his campaign), “we continue here, one more year of government, without an answer.” The families, she affirmed, have continued to search “through thick and thin” in the streets and jails. They will continue to search “without guarantees” and will continue to demand that the government “do its duty”, that it take care of, defend and listen to the searching mothers, also victims of what is not “organized crime” but rather “institutionalized crime”.
Leaving these mothers alone is becoming an accomplice in a criminal policy. To demand with them “Truth and Justice” is to honor them and recognize their struggle.
