Families of the 'Disappeared' Search for Clandestine Graves in Mexico Daniela Pastrana - Inter Press Service
go to original February 2, 2017

Over the years, thousands of people have disappeared in Mexico because of drug-related violence. Families frustrated with a lack of answers are taking matters into their own hands. As Al Jazeera's Natasha Ghoneim reports from Veracruz, some are digging up mass graves to try and find their loved ones. (Al Jazeera)

In 10 years, the so-called war on drugs launched by Calderón has left more than 177,000 murder victims, 73,500 of them during the administration of his successor, the also conservative Enrique Peña Nieto.

It has also left at least 30,000 missing people, although registers on disappearances vary greatly among the different authorities and civil society organizations.

In 2011, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity headed by the poet Javier Sicilia brought to the forefront the issue of forced disappearance, reporting hundreds of cases in this country of 122 million people.

But it was in October 2014, with the forced disappearance of 43 rural student teachers in Ayotzinapa, in the southwestern state of Guerrero, and in January 2016, when five young people were detained and “disappeared” by state police in Tierra Blanca, in the state of Veracruz, that the country discovered that many of the disappearances attributed to organized crime were actually carried out by the authorities.

“That is why they did not look for them,” said Miguel Trujillo, Juan Carlos´ younger brother.

Since then, groups of family members who, desperate because of the absence of the state, started their own searches, have mushroomed around the country.

To do this, they train: they take courses in forensic anthropology, archeology, law; and they gear up: they buy caving equipment, they get trays to find small bones; they form crews and have become experts in identifying graves and bones.

The first brigades were organized in March 2016 in Veracruz, a state in eastern Mexico where several clandestine graveyards have been discovered, where the remains of160 people have been found so far.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

Related: Anthropology Professor at Baylor University Reveals Importance of Returning Bodies to Loved Ones (The Shorthorn)

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