The Mexican 100,000

Over 100,000 people in Mexico are considered missing or dead.

On Tuesday, August 30, 2022, thousands of relatives of the missing marched through Mexico City demanding justice for their lost loved ones. According to the Washington Post, they held signs saying, “Where are they? Our children, where are they?” Family members say rather than authorities investigating the abductions, they claim the victims were involved in unlawful actions. Families are calling the government to action in hopes of finding their loved ones and stopping anyone else from going missing.

The disappearances started in 2006 soon after the start of the drug war when the government began to fight to stop drug traffickers.. Many disappearances involve drug dealers picked up by rival gangs; however, the missing also include witnesses to crimes, kidnap victims, collateral damage, and automobilists caught at cartel checkpoints.

A CBS article interviewing a mother whose son went missing states, “Rodríguez Barraza said armed men in a white car snatched her son, then 20. Since then — despite conducting her own investigation and offering prosecutors the evidence — she has not heard anything. “I took them videos, I brought them witnesses, and up to now, they have not done anything for me,” she said of prosecutors.” The mother lost her son, Fernando Ramírez Rodríguez in 2019, and he has still not been found.

Rodríguez is not the first or the last to go missing because of cartel-related violence. Mothers end up taking matters into their own hands. They conduct their own searches and are the ones to find their loved ones’ bodies in the ground.

“Most of the victims are thought to have been killed by drug cartels, their bodies dumped into shallow graves, dissolved or burned. Drug and kidnapping gangs often use the same locations over and over again, creating grisly killing fields, “ explains CBS news.

When authorities do help they focus on finding the graves but not the reason why they were killed. Typically, searchers call law enforcement when they find a burial sight in hopes that if the bodies are professionally exhumed, there will be crucial DNA testing performed on the remains. The testing on the remains will give at least one family closure and help them find peace.