The Mexican state of Jalisco accumulates one of the highest rates of disappearances in Mexico, whose search work is assumed by civil groups of relatives. On July 11, several explosive devices were detonated on a road on the outskirts of the city of Guadalajara when authorities attended to an alleged report of unidentified human remains, resulting in half a dozen deaths and 14 injuries.
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In the midst of a deep crisis of disappearances and an upsurge in violence throughout the North American country, the Government of the western state of Jalisco announced the suspension of searches for missing persons after the detonation of seven artisanal explosives. According to the statements of Governor Enrique Alfaro, the main objectives of the devices were personnel from the State Attorney General’s Office and members of the Police.
According to official sources, the attack, which left a balance of six dead and 14 wounded, is attributed to local criminal organizations with great territorial power and whose objective seeks to instill terror in the population. Among the deceased are three members of the State Prosecutor’s Office, a member of the Public Force and two civilians.
On the other hand, Enrique Alfaro’s statements have unleashed a strong controversy regarding the criminalization and obstruction of the work of groups of mothers searching for the disappearedwho accuse the Government of giving false statements in order to distort the civil organization and paralyze the search for the disappeared.
Conflicting versions between the voices of civilians and the official narrative
In a joint statement by the governor, senior military and police commanders, the official version of events was released.
Alfaro explained that it was a citizen, a member of the Mothers Searchers of Jalisco collective, who, upon receiving an anonymous call alerting about a clandestine graveinformed the authorities, allegedly falling into the ambush, according to the authorities.
“We responded to the report and went to review what was happening there. What happened is that it was a trap for our elements,”Alfaro pointed out.
However, the collective Searching Mothers of Jalisco AC alerted the public about the falsity of said statements.
Indira Navarro, an important member of the association, He flatly denied the official story and stressed that the collective does not alert the security forces in case of anonymous reports until they have verified the veracity of the facts.
“We never go at night and we do not call (the authorities) without first having proof,” Navarro said. The different groups accuse the State of Jalisco of criminalizing and revictimizing the members of the organization through the official narrative.
The mothers’ organization published a statement regarding the accusations on Wednesday the 12th and summoned other groups to search for the disappeared to a public demonstration on Sunday July 16, whose meeting point will be at the roundabout renamed in 2018 as Glorieta of the Disappeared in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco.
After public denunciations and a shower of criticism and indignation, on July 14, Governor Alfaro published a new official statement via Twitter in which he explained that when he mentioned at a press conference that “those types of processes are going to be suspended for the time being , until we can define a route to follow”, he was not referring to stopping the searches, but to interrupt the participation of groups in themwhich directly contravenes the Law of missing persons in Jalisco.
The crisis of the disappeared and impunity that plagues the state of Jalisco
Since 2006, the year in which the “war on drugs” began with the participation of the State Army and Navy, Mexico accumulates some 350,000 murders, most attributed to drug trafficking organizations. During this period, the state of Jalisco has been one of the most affected in the North American country.
Official figures suggest that, between January and June 2023, the state of Jalisco accumulated a total of 1,095 homicides and 750 disappeared. Additionally, the western Mexican state stands as the territory with the highest rate of missing persons since 1962, concentrating approximately 14% of the total disappearances officially registered in the country.
According to an investigation published by the local outlet ‘ZonaDocs, journalism in resistance’, only four of every 100 detainees in Jalisco, for the crime of forced disappearance or disappearance committed by individuals receive convictions.
The disappearance crisis in that state reached one of its most significant points when in March 2022 deleted 1,300 disappearance records from its servers, according to research carried out by Víctor Romero, researcher and former rector of the University of Guadalajara. Romero stresses that Jalisco has stopped feeding the national databases on the disappearance of people.
The critical situation that Mexico has been going through for several years has led the civilian population, mostly relatives of disappearance victims, to organize to replace the search tasks corresponding to the State. More than a hundred groups dedicated to the search for the disappeared have already been formed, according to data from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In the words of Indira Navarro, in Mexico “We are walking on a graveyard”.
with AFP
