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RFI interviewed Héctor Flores, from the Luz de Esperanza Collective, an association for relatives of the disappeared in Mexico, about the decision by state authorities to halt the search for anonymously reported graves. His NGO opposes it because that is, he says, “the only way to find them, even if it is in mass graves.” He also explains why disappearances have become the ‘perfect crime’ in his country.
Of the 110,000 reported missing persons in Mexico, the state of Jalisco registers the highest number of them, 15,000, according to official data. That territory in western Mexico is a stronghold of powerful organized crime cartels. Family members search for their loved ones on their own, in inhospitable corners of the country, armed with picks and shovels.
The associations of relatives of the disappeared play a fundamental role in locating the graves. One of its functions is to transmit complaints anonymously to the authorities, thus protecting the confidentiality and security of informants. For this reason, they do not understand the decision of the state of Jalisco to stop the search for graves reported anonymously.
Héctor Flores, founder of the Luz de Esperanza Collective, explained to RFI that “the only way to find our absent relatives, unfortunately dead and in graves, is through anonymous complaints.”
Municipal and federal will to “disappear the disappeared”
Héctor Flores is very critical of the power of the state of Jalisco, as well as of the federal government. “On the part of the state of Jalisco, during this administration, there has been no will to find them. Unfortunately, we do not see a change taking place because nothing has happened. On the contrary, during these five years, disappearances have skyrocketed in the State of Jalisco. In a single month, 700 disappearances were registered, which the state recognized. At the federal level it has not been possible to contain this phenomenon either. There is a policy of disappearing the disappeared from the federal to the municipal power. In all There is a refusal in government instances to recognize the problem. This has created a breeding ground for disappearances throughout the country to be the perfect crime and are on the rise.”
The government has failed to protect us.
Since the controversial anti-narcotics military strategy of 2006, Mexico has accumulated more than 350,000 murders. Added to the lack of protection is a feeling of contempt on the part of the authorities.
María de Jesús González is the mother of Ricardo, kidnapped from his own home, of whom there has been no trace since September of last year. For her, the relatives of the disappeared are doing what the authorities do not do. “The authorities don’t do much. Frankly, they don’t do anything, to tell the truth. Finding them ourselves is the only way to find our loved ones. We wouldn’t want to find them (in graves), but that’s how we’re finding them. Why “Well, perhaps because we have a bad government, a government that has failed to protect us. This is getting beyond itself.”
This “human tragedy”, as defined by the United Nations, does not stop hitting every corner of Mexico. This same Monday, a group to search for the disappeared located 11 graves with at least 22 bodies in the state of Tamaulipas, on the border of Mexico with the United States.
