In Sad Ritual, Families of Mexico's Missing Persons Line Up to Give DNA Samples Nidia Eobeidy Perez Montiel - The Los Angeles Times
go to original October 3, 2016

Last year, relatives of 43 missing students in Mexico give their blood to build a DNA bank to try and find their loved ones, who went missing in 2014. (NTDTV)

On a recent Sunday, scores of families showed up at the Catholic Church of Nuestra Señora de la Merced in a working-class neighborhood of this vibrant port city.

They came not to attend services, but for a distinct purpose: to give blood for possible DNA matches with human remains recently unearthed in a suspected dumping ground for murder victims on the northern fringes of Veracruz. Police technicians were taking the blood samples.

All of those at the church said they were keen to identify loved ones who are among Veracruz’s legions of desaparecidos, or disappeared.

“I would say 80% of the families in Veracruz have a relative who is missing, or know someone who is missing,” said Sergio Garcia Vasquez, a taxi driver who was among those at the church.

Led by a tip presumably supplied by drug cartel members who felt remorse, relatives and friends of missing people have been discovering secret graves in a field adjacent to a residential district called Colinas de Santa Fe. The excavations began Aug. 2 and at least 80 graves have been unearthed.

Nationwide, thousands of people have gone missing in recent years - some victims of the nation’s drug wars, some innocent bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Officials say about 1,000 people - mostly men - have disappeared in Veracruz state in the last decade, though some Mexicans say the toll is higher because some families don’t report the missing for fear of retribution.

Many of the family members who came to Nuestra Señora de la Merced said they were talking publicly about their cases for the first time. The growing prominence of the nationwide search movement for Mexico’s thousands of missing has prompted many families of the disappeared to come forward.

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

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