Enforced disappearances continue to plague Mexico

First modification: 08/30/2022 – 14:18

With our correspondent in Mexico City, Gwendolina Duval.

In 2021, the Committee against enforced disappearancevisiting Mexico, expressed concern about the Mexican situation and the phenomenon of re-victimization that affects the victims and their families in a context where impunity reigns.

The 43 of Ayotzinapa

Among the numerous disappeared are the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, kidnapped on the night of September 26-27, 2014. This emblematic case, which has undergone a striking rebound with the recent revelations that describe the case as a “state crime”, continues shaking Mexico. Eight years later, only the remains of three of them have been found.

Juventina Nicolás, from the Collective against Torture and Impunity, came to support the families during a march for justice and insisted that the search must not stop. “It’s been eight years of searching, of suffering for parents with a great feeling of powerlessness because there is still no justice. What we want is to know where they are. Where are they?”, She asks.

“It has affected us all”

“This war that Felipe Calderón started in 2006 and that has caused this wave of bloodshed and forced disappearances throughout Mexico has affected all of us directly or indirectly,” explains Angélica Orozco, a member of United Forces for Our Disappeared.

The association accompanies the families to confront the indifference and inaction of the authorities, since it is often the relatives themselves who investigate and search for their disappeared. “Our goal will always be to find them. We see that neither the police nor the local search committee have any intention of changing things,” she laments.

In Mexico, in the vast majority of cases of enforced disappearance, no one is ever punished.