Candles for the 110,000
"If only it were true that they found our disappeared and really brought them home, but no. They want results because they’re about to leave office."
MEXICO CITY.— Moments after twilight on the evening of December 21, a dozen people held a vigil in the middle of Paseo de la Reforma. The cozy tents of a Christmas market lined the avenue, but the candlelit gathering wasn’t a holiday celebration. In front of the Angel of Independence, amidst the rush-hour traffic, the small crowd laid out banners printed with photographs of their disappeared family members. Last week, the president told the nation that only 12,377 of the nearly 111,000 names in a federal registry of the disappeared were confirmed.
"If only it were true that they found our disappeared and really brought them home, but no," said Marina Armenta de la Rosa. "They want results because they’re about to leave office."
She pulled a red puffer vest over a t-shirt with a photo of her husband, Eduardo Toyota Espinoza. Eduardo disappeared on October 20, 2009 while working in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. An engineer for the telephone company Nextel, he was installing an antenna with eight colleagues when a commando of hooded men abducted the nine workers.
Marina: He’s been gone for 14 and a half years. We’re in this search demanding justice and truth from the authorities, and we don’t have a response. Now they say that there are fewer disappeared, when there are more than 110,000. They say they’ve found lots of our disappeared and that they brought them back, but it’s not true.
We need the numbers to be the real ones so that they don’t keep disappearing people and so there will be an effective search, because right now it’s just a government simulation. There was no change with this government. Yes, we’ve had meetings, but a change in that they really want to find our disappeared, no. That they’re really interested in us knowing where our disappeared, and all of Mexico’s disappeared, are—they’re not interested.
Nancy Lorena Morales, who wore a pale pink sweatshirt that matched her lipstick, said her husband, Vicente Rojo Martinez, does not appear on the federal registry.
Nancy: He disappeared in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, in 2009. The process has been tedious, exasperating. My father-in-law was searching for him, but he died this year.
Vicente worked as a traveling salesman selling paint. He went to Piedras Negras. 21 people went and only 9 came back. 12 were disappeared. First six disappeared in a van. The first van was red. That’s where my husband was. Then the blue van disappeared, which was in a gas station with six people.
We have a hunger to search and to find him. We go to Saltillo, we go to the Saltillo prosecutor’s office, we go to the prosecutor’s office here on Insurgentes. There hasn’t been any progress in the case. The authorities don’t do their job. They send us all over the place, but there aren’t any new developments.
The numbers aren’t the ones the government says. It affects us because they say they found 110,000 disappeared people, but we don’t know where they are or who they are. To the Mexican government, get to work to find them.
Bundled against the chilly night air, Maria Antonieta Tonorio fumbled against the wind to light a candle. Her son Gerson García Tonorio disappeared on October 9, 2022.
Maria Antonieta: He went on a hike in the Parque de los Dos Aguas. He is from the city but the park is Tlamanalco, Mexico State. I reported it here. I didn’t know. I’d never lost a person before. I reported it here with the competent authorities—supposedly they’re competent, but the truth is that they closed the case after a month. They told me they couldn’t do anything. Along with my family we traced private cameras until we found his location. We did the work that they don’t do, tracing, asking, checking transportation logbooks, until we found that the park’s cameras show him entering and that was his last location.
The staff aren’t trained and there aren’t enough of them. I have to go alone to tape up posters, knock on doors. In the city I requested support from the National Guard and they denied it. I went to the president. I went to visit the prosecutor here. He didn’t respond to me.
When the case was transferred to Mexico State, they immediately did the search with the National Guard. The fiscal is available 24 hours to answer any question I have. Here the lawyer told me, don’t bother me when I’m off the clock. He didn’t help me with anything, he didn’t do anything. No one, no one did anything.
Now I don’t know. I don’t know where to go.
It’s easy for the authorities to say, we’re working, when it’s not true. It’s a mockery. I told them, don’t act like this is just anything, it’s a human being. They’re human beings. They say they’re working, but what do they do? They take two hours for lunch. Friday and Saturday they don’t work. They get there at nine, and first they eat breakfast. They’re very inhumane. Because they’ve never lost a family member, they don’t have empathy.
I’ve met people who have been searching for six years. I can’t believe it. I went to Veracruz, Hidalgo, Morelos, Puebla. If we don’t make our voices heard, they won’t pay attention to us.
This country is a mess. What use is it to have a beautiful country if the government is a mess? What use is it to have a beautiful country if we have such bad rulers? They don’t care. They don’t have empathy. They don’t care about the people. I think that for them, the more people who disappear, the better.
And the strange thing is it’s all young people, students, people with their lives ahead of them. My son was—is a hard worker, honest, responsible. I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. Only God knows.
