26,000 Go Missing in Mexico Drug Wars, Families Plea for Thorough Investigation Voice of Russia
go to original October 21, 2013

Women hold posters of their missing relatives in Saltillo. (Reuters)

Violence erupted on the streets when the old power bases were disrupted by internal splits, a proliferation of new cartels and President Felipe Calderon's ill-fated "drug war" between 2006 and 2012. This war left at least 60,000 dead across Mexico, and swathes of the country awash with bullets and blood. The major battle-grounds have shifted further south of late, but another 14,000 have died since Enrique Peña Nieto came to power last December, according to analysis by respected news magazine Zeta.

As the Independent reports, that authorities became so corrupt that a line between cartels and state was dissolved. Politicians, prosecutors, police and armed forces in Coahuila, its northern neighbours Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas and a depressingly large number of other states are involved in the production and transport of drugs, weapons and people.

Fuundec (Fuerza Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila or United Forces for Our Missing in Coahuila) knows of 321 people who have disappeared in the state since 2007 in 143 separate "kidnappings" (the true number is almost certainly closer to 500). This includes the disappearance of 23 male bus-company workers attending a meeting on a ranch in April 2009 (only two families reported a disappearance). Of that 321, just seven have been found so far: two rescued during a police operation (by chance rather than design), three freed by their captors, one (who was mentally ill) found with the help of a journalist, and the seventh found dead – killed by his captors. More than half the victims are under 35; 17 per cent are women. They include housewives, engineers, students, bus drivers, street vendors and business owners. Money rarely seems the motive, as genuine ransom demands are rare.

According to the report by the Independent, Fuundec says it has strong evidence in more than 10 per cent of its cases that state agents – local or federal police, army or navy officers – directly participated in the disappearances. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both found compelling evidence of state involvement in more than half the disappearances they documented across Mexico – but the government continues to focus blame on the gangs.

Yet the grim reports on murders and mass graves have failed to destroy the hope most families still have of finding their loved ones alive.

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