More than 110,000 people are believed to have disappeared in Mexico. Across the country, relatives remember their uncertain fate. In the state of Guanajuato, mothers are taking the search into their own hands.
Carmen is standing at her dining table, which is covered with a colorful oilcloth, and is cutting up small pieces of tomatoes on a wooden board. Crispy pork rind, avocado, onions, coriander and chili. She lists the ingredients for a guacamaya sandwich. When her son came back, she would make him such a sandwich. He always liked that. “I know he will come back,” says Carmen.
As she tells it, the 80-year-old’s tears roll down her narrow, wrinkled face. On May 31, 2018, Carmen made her son Oscar a guacamaya sandwich for the last time. The recipe for this, along with many others, is part of a recipe book that the photographer Zahara Gómez Lucini put together with 74 women to commemorate their sons and daughters and family members who have disappeared. Against forgetting.
A picture of Carmen’s son can also be seen in it. Dark hair, bushy eyebrows. He smiles – surrounded by his four children. Carmen recalls that the last time she saw him, his hair was standing up. Why should he comb his hair when he’s almost bald anyway – he said that with a laugh when he said goodbye. After that she never saw him again.
At that time Oscar was 41 years old and worked as an Uber driver. The local drug cartel put him under pressure and in the end forced him into the business. Carmen begged him to let it be. He would have hugged her. “I can’t get out of there anymore,” he replied.
Carmen’s son Oscar has been missing for more than five years. The 80-year-old is not giving up hope of his return.
More than 110,000 disappeared
There has been no trace of Oscar for five years. More than 110,000 people are believed to have disappeared in Mexico. Because they got caught between the fronts, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they were recruited – often against their will – by organized crime. The stories are similar, many families in Carmen’s neighborhood are affected.
Carmen herself was repeatedly threatened. She received anonymous calls and messages telling her not to look for her son. Again and again men appeared who would have posted themselves on the street corner.
Relatives form search parties
The state hardly does anything, criticizes Carmen. The investigations came to nothing. There is still no uniform nationwide database for the disappeared.
But in her town, as in so many other places, an independent search party of mothers and relatives has formed, trekking through the surrounding mountains to dig for the missing. Mass graves were discovered again and again. She herself is in poor health and too old, says Carmen. But the other mothers were also looking for her, she knew that.
Again and again the search parties, to which relatives have joined forces, also discover mass graves.
“Society looks the other way”
On this day, the mothers from Guanajuato receive an anonymous tip. They start breaking up the ground in an abandoned house. At first they move cautiously, don’t want to be discovered, keep turning around. At some point they don’t seem to care.
The dust swirls through the air. Some wear a face mask. A young woman, who wants to remain anonymous for security reasons, swings wide and hits the concrete floor with full force. She is looking for her son. It was only this morning that she received sad news via WhatsApp: her sister-in-law’s sister had been missing for a few days. She was at a party and hasn’t come back. Now she was found dead in a hotel.
Now she is part of the statistics, says the mother. It could hit another one tomorrow. Society looks the other way.
My son was 18 when he disappeared. Now he would be 21. Our life ends when our children disappear. We will be killed alive. We live on, but we’re dead inside.
Though the quest is dangerous, they want to keep going. Just a few days ago, the local government banned mothers from being escorted by security forces, even though five family members who had been tirelessly searching for their sons, daughters, sisters and brothers were killed in Guanajuato alone in the past three years.