Searching for Mexico's Drug War 'Disappeared' Tom Bateman - BBC News
go to original November 1, 2012

Photos of missing people on a wall outside the mortuary in Acapulco. (BBC)

With thousands of people missing after six years of murderous violence linked to Mexico's drugs cartels, families say they want more done to find their loved ones.

It was a warm night in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and heavily armed troops were patrolling the streets, at the height of the war on drug cartels here.

Victor Baca, 21, had just dropped his girlfriend at her home and was buying a hot dog with two friends at a fast food stand.

Suddenly, and apparently without reason, troops approached the three young men, arrested them and drove them away.

That was three years ago - and the last time Mr Baca's family ever saw him.

"We think that part of the reason the military gave him a hard time was because he wasn't identified," says his father Gerardo Baca, explaining that his son may have forgotten his ID before going out that night.

"We didn't know they were arrested until the next day, when one of his arrested friends was sent to the state police," he added.

"We have no idea of the whereabouts of my son."

The fate of Victor Baca is one that is shared by many people in Mexico, where fighting between rival drug cartels and the military crackdown in response has seen an estimated 60,000 people killed in six years.

According to figures released earlier this year by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, 16,000 bodies remain unidentified and a total of 24,000 people are missing

At the top of a hill in the city, beyond the rows of graves covered in floral tributes, lies an area of wasteland that has to be disturbed regularly by gravediggers.

"Yesterday the mortuary sent 12 bodies to us as they were not identified," says Luis Arredondo who runs the cemetery.

"They send us 10 to 12 bodies every three months and then they are buried here, in an area of 2,000 sq m."

These are the unknown victims of Mexico's drug wars - people who'll get no funeral, have no gravestone and who will, after a year, be buried in a mass grave. At this site alone the bodies of 600 unidentified people are buried.

For one observer of the crimes carried out in the fight for lucrative drug supply routes into the US, the numbers of those missing may be an underestimate.

Professor Monica Serrano from the Colegio de Mexico, a university in Mexico City, says the cartels' use of threats and extortion to boost funds is forcing people to leave their homes and in many cases make themselves "disappear".

Read more at BBC News

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