The four Americans kidnapped in Mexico were found in just days. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people are still missing in the country

New York () — As the two Americans who survived a kidnapping last week in Matamoros receive medical treatment and the bodies of the two dead are repatriated, the broader epidemic of disappearances in Mexico remains largely unresolved: More than 100,000 Mexicans and migrants have disappeared without explanation.

Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat said on Thursday that hundreds of security forces were heading to the border city to reinforce the defense of the area in an attempt to safeguard “the well-being of citizens.” But the authorities’ quick response to the kidnapping of the Americans has generated disapproval among Mexicans.

“In Mexico, the lives of foreigners are worth more than that of Mexicans themselves,” one person wrote on social media on Tuesday.

Another hoped that “the US Government would help all the relatives of the disappeared in Mexico so that the #AMLO Government (President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) finds them as quickly as the #US citizens. in a Twitter post on Wednesday.

“Families of the disappeared (can only) hope to have such a quick response from Mexican officials to their reports about the disappearance of loved ones,” Maureen Meyer, vice president for Programs at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told . ).

Mexican authorities have been accused of being slow to find disappearance victims. The reluctance has been attributed to a lack of capacity amid a large number of cases, official collusion with criminal groups or “a tendency to blame victims… suggesting that they must have been linked to some illicit activity,” he added. Meyer, who is an expert on human rights in Mexico.

The government’s attempt to tackle organized crime can also lead to disappearances, he added.

Last year, a Mexican government report blamed the country’s own armed forces and police forces for the disappearance of 43 students in 2014.

While traveling through the southwestern city of Iguala, the students were stopped by local police and federal military forces. Exactly what happened next is unknown, as most of the missing students were never found. Survivors of the original group of 100 said their buses had been stopped by armed police and soldiers who suddenly opened fire.

There has also been a forensic crisis in the country, with more than 52,000 unidentified bodies in government custody, Meyer said, a delay that needs the cooperation of prosecutors.

Some families have taken matters into their own hands. Many have resorted to forming dozens of “search groups” to investigate disappearances on their own.

Nayeli Anahi González Rangel’s mother holds a sign with her photo during a demonstration to demand the government to find her and other missing people, at the Glorieta de Los Desaparecidos (Glorieta de los Desaparecidos), in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, Mexico, on May 10, 2022, during Mother’s Day. (Photo by ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Some 40,000 relatives of missing people in Mexico over the years have participated in training on finding their loved ones, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a 2022 report.

a dangerous border

The kidnapped Americans were found in the state of Tamaulipas, home to several criminal gangs, including the Northeast Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, which have been at war over control of border crossings into the United States.

Gang violence has plagued Tamaulipas, with drugs, weapons and migrant smuggling that security experts attributed to the increase in crime.

The Gulf of Mexico region, which includes Tamaulipas, is the shortest route for migrants seeking a better life in the United States.

But the journey is fraught with risk, and the state has a reputation for being dangerous for migrants, who are often victims of kidnapping, according to Meyer. The state has the third-highest number of missing persons cases in the country, according to government figures.

In 2010, 72 migrants from Central and South America were massacred by a cartel in San Fernando, a few hours from the Tamaulipas border. Also several mass graves have been found in the state over the years.

The plight of migrants is further threatened by US immigration policies that require thousands of people to wait on the Mexican side of the border, human rights experts say.

There has been at least one incident in the past of migrant men being abducted from a shelter in Matamoros, Meyer said.

The kidnapping of the US citizens — identified as Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown, Latavia Washington McGee and Eric Williams — adds political pressure on Mexico’s President López Obrador to fulfill his administration’s promise to care for the country’s missing.

Experts say his administration has made some efforts to identify missing people, but the number of missing has continued to rise under López Obrador’s watch. Tens of thousands of people have gone missing every year since his tenure began in late 2018, according to government data.

The president has defended his record of helping the families of the disappeared, saying that no other government has gone as far as his administration. “No government has been as concerned about the disappeared as it is now,” he said at a press conference last May.

“The entire Ministry of the Interior is dedicated to that and to looking for clandestine graves because we must not forget that there was a war against drug trafficking in which many disappeared,” he said.

As a presidential candidate, López Obrador controversially promised to combat Mexico’s epidemic of gun-related violence by focusing on social programs, with what he called “hugs, not bullets,” suggesting a break with hardline tactics by their predecessors. In office, the “hugs” rhetoric has been somewhat undermined by the launch of a security strategy by López Obrador that empowers the armed forces. Yet the murder rate remains stubbornly high.

‘s Karol Suárez contributed to this report.