Searching for Mexico's Disappeared: One Mother's Long Journey Emily Pickrell - The Christian Science Monitor
go to original August 19, 2014

A mother holds up a picture of her missing child, who she says is a victim of forced disappearance, at a march in Mexico City. The mothers are demanding Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto release the results from police investigations into their missing children. (Edgard Garrido)

MEXICO CITY — Since the day in 2009 when Luis Angel Leon Rodriguez, a federal police officer, disappeared, his mother has searched for any clues that could reunite her with her son – or at the very least, his remains.

Araceli Rodriguez has been thrown out of the Mexico City police station where her son once worked. She’s received threatening phone calls and menacing letters; she's battled reports calling her son a deserter. She’s traveled around the country seeking interviews with judges, local politicians, and convicted prisoners, looking for anyone able to shed new light on what happened to him.

“Of course I am afraid,” says Ms. Rodriguez, a soft-spoken woman with steel-blue eyes. She travels with a bodyguard now, but says it’s not the threats that keep her up at night. “I am more afraid of not knowing what happened to my son.”

While drug-related violence – the kind that may have led to Luis Angel's disappearance – has plagued Mexico for decades, the killings spiked after former President Felipe Calderón tasked a militarized police with fighting narcotraffickers in 2006. At least 60,000 people were killed during his six-year term. An additional 26,000 or more Mexicans disappeared in that same time frame, apparent casualties of Mexico’s drug war.

Read the rest at The Christian Science Monitor

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