The mothers who search for Mexico’s missing children | Features

Mexico Metropolis, Mexico – The mariachi band had simply struck up its first ranchera when Axel grabbed his mom’s hand.

“Come on, mama!” the lanky 16-year-old shouted, spinning Daniela beneath a cover of paper lanterns glowing within the heat night time air.

The courtyard pulsed with music and laughter as cousins joined in, skirts twirling and footwear scuffing the bottom. When Daniela tried to slide away to relaxation, her son pulled her again, draping his favorite gray hoodie over her shoulders and tugging her by the sleeves.

That was in April 2022.

Six months later, Daniela Gonzalez was knee-deep in a ravine crammed with refuse looking for her son.

Two months after the household marriage ceremony the place they’d danced till the early hours, Axel disappeared.

Looking for graves

It’s a sunny, cloudless morning in Might 2025, and Daniela is getting ready to decrease herself some 20 metres (66 toes) right into a ravine in Palmas Axotitla, a hillside neighbourhood within the borough of Alvaro Obregon.

The world is a maze of flat-roofed, two- and three-storey properties tightly packed alongside steep streets, with slim alleyways snaking between them. The ravine cuts by way of the neighbourhood, edged by homes with protruding concrete foundations and a small playground.

The ravine’s steep slopes are plagued by garbage, damaged furnishings and plastic bottles tangled within the dense undergrowth. Sewage collects into foul, foaming streams amid the vegetation and garbage on the backside of the ravine.

It’s a place residents keep away from.

The neighbourhood, like a number of others in Alvaro Obregon, is beneath cartel management. Rival gangs use the dead-end streets as hiding grounds from which to promote medicine and recruit younger males, and the ravine as a dumping floor for his or her homicide victims. In 2021, authorities recovered human remains from the Palmas Axotitla ravine. Extra our bodies are believed to be buried there.

Daniela arrives on the ravine at round 8 am. She is just not alone. Greater than 100 folks collect on the ravine’s edge, getting into the positioning by way of a gap within the rusted playground fence.

Most are relations of the lacking. It took them a yr to acquire permission from the native authorities to conduct a five-day search operation on the website. They’ve come within the hope that among the many piles of garbage, they could discover the stays of their little kids, siblings, husbands and wives.

Alongside the households are greater than 20 members of Mexico Metropolis’s hearth brigade, who will assist with the search, armed police and Nationwide Guard troops, who will scan the hillsides for cartel “lookouts” who could assault these looking in the event that they get too near their clandestine burial websites, and forensic specialists who arrange chrome steel tables prepared to look at any stays which can be discovered.

Daniela and the opposite moms say such massive operations solely occur after they exert stress on the Mexico Metropolis authorities to accompany them, and that, in lots of circumstances, searches could not have been needed had the authorities taken their family members’ disappearances severely after they had been first reported. When safety forces are current, it could really feel like a show for native information shops, they add. And more often than not, households search on their very own.

“We’re those who discover,” Daniela explains.

“This work we do,” she says, “is resistance. It’s re-existence. It’s love.”

Into the ravine

Round Daniela, moms in sunhats tighten the laces of their waterproof boots. Within the playground, volunteers stretch a tarp for shade and set out water bottles.

After pulling on a surgical masks to defend towards the stench, Daniela clips into a security rope and climbs down into the ravine. The air is damp and heavy with the odor of rotting meals and animal carcasses. She begins to show over torn mattresses and twisted wire with a pitchfork.

“I nonetheless search with the hope that he’s alive,” the 40-year-old mom of three explains.

Voices echo round her, a mixture of shouted directions and quiet prayers. Metallic instruments often strike stone. Potential “lookouts” are noticed by relations, however disappear into the alleyways earlier than officers can attain them.

At round midday, the cruel solar bearing down on her, Daniela plunges her pitchfork into the sludge and pulls out a crumpled hoodie. It’s darkish with mud. Her arms tremble as she turns it over. However the brand is flawed. The dimensions is completely different. It’s not Axel’s.

Later that afternoon, when the day’s search ends, she stands close to a stream of black wastewater falling from a cluster of orange brick homes peering over the cliff face. “I believed I had discovered him,” she says, her phrases catching in her throat.

“I felt this shock, like my chest caved in. After which nothing — it wasn’t his. I simply need to hold going.”

Disappearance disaster

Since 2006, practically 120,000 folks have gone lacking in Mexico. That yr, then-President Felipe Calderon launched a militarised “struggle on medicine” towards highly effective cartels. Slightly than dismantling them, the crackdown fractured Mexico’s legal underworld.

Alejandra Ortiz Diaz, a human rights lawyer primarily based in Monterrey, a metropolis in Mexico’s northeast, says that by concentrating on cartel leaders with out addressing corruption or native economies, the federal government created energy vacuums that splintered massive organisations into smaller, extra violent teams.

“These factions turned on each other — and on civilians — of their combat to manage territory, [human] trafficking routes, and native populations,” she says.

The disaster continues to deepen. Within the first 4 months of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, which started in October 2024, roughly 4,000 people went lacking — roughly 40 per day.

Most of those that go lacking in Mexico are teenage boys and younger males. They disappear after encounters with cartel members looking for to use or recruit them, or as a result of they inadvertently witness legal exercise or change into concerned with these teams. Smaller numbers of teenage ladies and younger ladies additionally go lacking. In line with Ortiz, they are usually victims of rape and intercourse trafficking.

When folks go lacking, “households typically report that authorities do nothing at first,” says Ortiz.

“Courts are gradual, and interagency coordination is poor, which signifies that even when stays are discovered, investigations stall. Weak establishments, underfunded forensic groups, and systemic bottlenecks mix to go away most disappearances uninvestigated.”

In consequence, households have been pressured to take issues into their very own arms, forming search collectives to search for their family members.

“There’s part of you that desires to search out one thing, and an element that doesn’t,” Daniela says. “As a result of if I discovered one thing of his, I might need to face the reality — that one thing occurred to him.”

‘He was mine’

Daniela perches on a jagged rock. Because the afternoon mild performs on her darkish brown hair, she peels off her gloves and scans the comb.

A faint smile crosses her face as she thinks of her son. He was affectionate and respectful, however “additionally had that little rebellious streak,” she says.

“As a little bit child, he couldn’t sit nonetheless. He’d run all around the home.”

Daniela raised Axel, his older sister and his youthful brother largely on her personal in the home they shared together with her dad and mom. He cared for his siblings and liked serving to his grandfather weld doorways and home windows. “All the time curious, all the time making an attempt issues out,” she says.

“However with Axel, I needed to warn him: not everybody out there’s a true good friend. He was too trusting of strangers. That scared me.”

Saturdays had been for events or assembly associates within the neighbourhood.

“He’d all the time ask for permission to exit … however he was intelligent. He’d begin asking on Monday for Saturday.”

Axel liked reggaeton, would spend hours perfecting his hair and was meticulous about his garments, by no means leaving the home with out the light-grey hoodie Daniela purchased for him.

“He had a mode,” she says. “Even when we didn’t have a lot cash, he all the time discovered a approach to look sharp.”

At college, he struggled — not as a result of he lacked intelligence, however as a result of he felt stressed.

“He wasn’t meant for a desk,” Daniela says. “However he had goals. He talked about turning into a mechanic or studying a commerce. One thing together with his arms.”

At house, he hugged his mom day-after-day, generally simply to say “I really like you” and different occasions to get out of bother.

“I all the time knew when he was as much as one thing — he’d butter me up first,” she laughs warmly. “However even after I scolded him, he by no means raised his voice. He revered me. He liked me.”

Her son’s room stays largely untouched. “His garments, his footwear, his cologne — they’re all nonetheless right here,” Daniela says quietly. “Typically I’m going in simply to really feel like he’s close to.”

She pauses, eyes welling. “He wasn’t good. He was a teen. However he was mine.”

‘I stored seeing Axel’

It was the night time of June 23, 2022, when Axel stepped out of the pistachio-green, two-storey household house in San Miguel Ajusco, a mountainous neighbourhood on the southern fringe of Mexico Metropolis. He advised his mom he was heading to his girlfriend’s home close by.

“There have been guidelines,” Daniela says. “If you happen to left, you needed to say if you had been coming again.”

Axel left at 10:30 pm and stated he would return inside the hour. He wore one in every of his favorite outfits: pale blue denims, an orange sleeveless vest, a cap, black-and-white sneakers he had not too long ago ordered on Daniela’s bank card, and his gray hoodie.

Smiling, Daniela remembers how he hadn’t requested her earlier than shopping for the sneakers. “The supply girl arrived and stated, ‘Your son requested for these.’ And I simply stated, ‘Axel!’ And he stated, ‘Come on, mama!’”

Hours later, Axel nonetheless hadn’t returned house and wasn’t answering his telephone. Daniela didn’t know the place his girlfriend lived or how one can attain her household.

“It was a really new relationship,” Daniela says. “I didn’t even know her title.”

By morning, she was overwhelmed with fear. She tried to file a lacking individuals report, however the police advised her to attend. “The police stated my son had gone to a celebration and would in all probability be again in a day or two,” she explains.

As a minor, Axel’s case ought to have triggered a direct search beneath nationwide protocol.

Nevertheless it took 4 months for the police to difficulty an Amber Alert, signalling to the general public and the authorities {that a} little one was lacking and that pressing motion was required.

Within the meantime, as she waited for the police to behave, Daniela searched the neighbourhood for any clues about Axel’s disappearance. Early every morning, she would retrace the paths he might need taken, hoping for a glimpse of him or a lead. Some nights, she ventured out once more, following the routes he took when he went out together with his associates.

“I couldn’t sleep at night time,” Daniela says, her voice tight. “I stored seeing Axel, imagining him misplaced someplace within the metropolis. Everybody else went on with their lives — my household tried to maintain busy, distracted themselves — however I couldn’t. I used to be alone with the worry, the fear, the not figuring out … every little thing round me was falling aside whereas I used to be caught in that nightmare.”

She suffered from insomnia, extreme complications and hypertension.

A couple of months after Axel’s disappearance, members of her prolonged household started to distance themselves – they stopped answering her calls or advised her she wanted to simply accept her son was gone. Some feared being focused by cartels; others prevented her out of exhaustion.

“They advised me I used to be obsessed,” she says.

Daniela had to decide on between her job as a cleaner in a personal house and on the lookout for her son. She selected to maintain looking for Axel.

‘Only a mom, with a shovel’

Six months after her son’s disappearance, and with no assist from the authorities, Daniela turned to a grassroots collective she discovered on social media. Una Luz en el Camino (A Mild on the Path) was fashioned in Might 2022 by 60 households of disappeared folks.

For the primary time, she met others like her. There have been fathers, siblings and different relations, however largely moms. And she or he realised for the primary time that her expertise was removed from uncommon.

“The state’s neglect is systemic,” says Daniela.

The collective linked her with their human rights lawyer to place stress on the authorities, whereas different moms accompanied her to conferences with the police and the prosecutor’s workplace. Nonetheless, there was no follow-up — solely a suggestion by the police to “examine the morgue”.

“They advised me my son may already be useless. That I may discover him there,” she explains.

Visiting the morgue — which she nonetheless does roughly as soon as every week — fills her with “sorrow and rage,” she says, “as a result of the authorities did not do their job correctly from the beginning.”

The police initially restricted Daniela’s entry to her son’s case file till the collective and its lawyer insisted that, as his mom, she had the fitting to see it. When she reviewed the file in December 2022, it was virtually empty. The ten pages held no file of Axel’s final location or telephone exercise. “They hadn’t accomplished something,” she explains.

“I proceed accountable the prosecutor’s workplace [which decides when to issue Amber Alerts] for denying my son the fitting to be looked for,” she provides with frustration. Consultants say the primary 48 hours are probably the most crucial for looking. “That negligence is why he nonetheless hasn’t been discovered,” she says.

In January 2023, Daniela looked for Axel with the collective for the primary time within the wooded hills of her neighbourhood. Greater than 20 moms and volunteers got here. Daniela introduced a backyard shovel and spade, and borrowed gloves and a solar hat. She had no protecting gear — no masks, boots, or security helmet to defend her from the danger of illness whereas digging by way of garbage or from falling rocks.

“I used to be terrified,” she remembers. “However I stored considering — if I don’t go, who will? I didn’t know what I used to be on the lookout for. Only a mom, with a shovel and hope.”

Since then, Daniela has searched fields, ravines, and landfills with the collective, however she additionally goes alone to hospitals, morgues, and even prisons, following each lead she finds. Her day typically begins earlier than dawn, and the terrain she searches in is normally polluted and tough. “The odor will get into every little thing,” she says. “Your hair, your garments, your pores and skin.”

She factors to the picture of Axel printed on her T-shirt. “I’m going door to door with my son’s picture, asking if anybody noticed one thing that night time.”

She has heard rumours {that a} cartel kidnapped Axel, however she hasn’t discovered any concrete solutions.

“I hold looking,” she says. “Once we exit as a brigade, I additionally assist different moms search for their kids. All of us carry the identical ache.”

Sleep affords little relaxation. “I get up considering I see him, then realise he’s not there,” she says. “I dream of him calling me, asking for assist. I all the time suppose he’s misplaced, struggling someplace.

“I’ve seen situations nobody ought to endure — like human bones buried within the trash. Nobody ought to ever need to search for a liked one like this.”

‘Dismiss studies, delay investigations’

Ortiz, the human rights lawyer, agrees.

She has spent years representing the households of victims. “Households shouldn’t be main these searches,” she says. “However as a result of the establishments are fragmented, underfunded or simply detached, households are pressured to fill the void.

“Authorities often dismiss studies, delay investigations, or fail to comply with up on leads, leaving households with little recourse.”

Ortiz explains that disappearances usually fall into two classes: these through which authorities are concerned — handing over people to cartels, overlaying up crimes, or deliberately ignoring circumstances — and people carried out solely by organised crime, reminiscent of killings or kidnappings linked to human trafficking, recruitment, organ harvesting, or to exert territorial management. The cartels concerned vary from native gangs to transnational legal teams.

In numerous circumstances, she says, the state crosses the road into complicity. She has dealt with circumstances through which native police have allegedly detained people for trivial issues after which handed them over to cartels. These are sometimes neighborhood members considered as obstacles as a result of they problem native energy buildings or refuse to cooperate with cartels.

“We’ve circumstances with telephone calls saying, ‘I simply obtained stopped by the police,’ after which the individual vanishes. Or a witness says the abductors wore official gear,” she explains.

Even when essential proof surfaces, Ortiz says households usually aren’t knowledgeable. When stays are discovered, the circumstances are sometimes slowed down in forms, and our bodies languish unexamined in morgues. “The forensic system is overwhelmed,” she explains.

As of 2023, greater than 72,000 human stays had been labelled as unidentified by state morgues, in line with Mexican investigative nonprofit ​​Quinto Elemento Lab. The closure this yr of the Nationwide Human Identification Middle as a consequence of federal finances cuts and inner shake-ups additional crippled forensic work. The centre had been processing roughly 300 circumstances per thirty days, aiming to scale back the backlog of unidentified our bodies.

Ortiz says authorities commit little consideration to truly finding the disappeared, as a substitute specializing in figuring out somebody harmless accountable — a safer choice than confronting highly effective cartels or exposing the establishment’s personal negligence.

Political stress from above — notably from native prosecutors and police officers cautious of exposing hyperlinks between safety forces and cartels — additionally disincentivises pursuing such circumstances. Many by no means attain the courts, she says.

“Circumstances should not correctly investigated from the beginning,” she says. “Households are left ready and looking on their very own. Households are stored ready for months or years with no solutions.”

Returning a son’s stays

Within the face of such challenges, these within the collective remind each other they aren’t alone. Daniela has discovered a brand new household among the many collective’s members.

On the kids’s playground in Palmas Axotitla, ladies of their 60s rock gently on swings. Within the ravine under, moms of their late 30s and early 40s supply one another water and phrases of encouragement earlier than plunging again into the warmth and chaos of the search.

Alongside different moms, Daniela has participated in forensic and authorized workshops supported by universities. She will now differentiate between human and animal bones, doc websites, and correctly deal with proof. In the course of the Palmas Axotitla search, Daniela identifies a rubbish-filled spot beneath homes overlooking the hillside as a attainable place the place our bodies may lie. She insists the fireplace brigade — who’ve expertise working in troublesome terrain and handle heavy tools — dig, explaining why the positioning is smart as it’s under the place they noticed suspected cartel lookouts.

Within the ravine, a lady lifts out a small backpack, and others collect shut, providing silent assist. The backpack is handed over to the forensic specialists at their makeshift tables, however it yields no clues.

Since 2021, search collectives — typically with the assist of the town’s authorities — have combed the wooded slopes of Ajusco nationwide park, within the metropolis’s south and lengthening into Alvaro Obregon, virtually each day. These operations are a part of the broader community of citizen-led searches throughout Mexico Metropolis, concentrating on areas recognized by way of nameless ideas or prior discoveries. In Ajusco, a number of units of human stays have been recovered. Authorities and activists consider that greater than 100 our bodies could possibly be buried in these secluded woods.

“All that had been positioned are actually house, recognized and given a dignified relaxation,” Daniela says. “Perhaps now their households can relaxation, too.”

She crouches and rests her arms on her knees for a second. Round her, relations dig rigorously, sweat streaking their faces.

“I bear in mind the day we returned the stays of 1 boy to his household,” she says, talking over the sound of shovels. “His mom collapsed proper there when she noticed the rotting stays of her son’s crimson shirt, in the midst of the work, sobbing. All of us rushed to her, held her and cried collectively.”

The stays had been later confirmed as the girl’s son’s.

These are troublesome moments, Daniela explains, “since you suppose, ‘That could possibly be my little one.” However she additionally remembers that day as “stunning”.

“That small closure for a household — even if you haven’t discovered your individual little one, you’re feeling you’ve accomplished one thing significant proper right here, on this place,” she says.

“Typically, we return another person’s liked one house. And even when it’s not Axel, it means the world to that household. And that retains us going.”

Surveillance community

On the fifth day of the search in Palmas Axotitla, Julieta Guerrero leans on a cane as she makes her manner in the direction of a park bench overlooking the sting of the ravine.

The 62-year-old wears a wide-brimmed hat over her shoulder-length white hair. As one of many older relations on the website, she can’t descend into the ravine however has been looking by way of garbage piled on the prime.

Julieta’s son, Sergio Gerardo Jimenez Guerrero, was 33 years outdated when he disappeared on his approach to work on October 20, 2023.

Julieta’s daughter tracked down video footage from close by companies a few days after Sergio’s disappearance. Footage confirmed him leaving house and getting right into a blue or inexperienced automotive the night time he disappeared. The household traced his route up towards a small overpass within the semi-rural hills of Las Aguilas, the southern neighbourhood the place he lived.

Once they approached the authorities, urging them to seek the advice of Mexico Metropolis’s centralised surveillance system (C5) for extra footage, law enforcement officials claimed there have been no cameras. “It’s a federal, wooded space,” they stated — that means the town’s C5 surveillance community didn’t prolong into the terrain, which lies beneath federal management. However Julieta’s daughter went to the road herself and located a minimum of three cameras. Armed with actual addresses and digicam IDs, they went to the prosecutor’s workplace — just for the authorities to refuse to research as soon as once more.

“The whole lot’s a pretext,” Julieta says. “They only didn’t wish to present us.”

The C5 operates tens of hundreds of cameras, ostensibly to maintain residents secure. However households like Julieta’s typically discover the authorities unresponsive. Footage is routinely lacking, cameras are “offline”, or the authorities declare to not have jurisdiction.

What must be a device for reality has change into an emblem of stonewalling, in line with Ortiz.

“All too typically, police keep away from requesting or reviewing C5 surveillance footage, particularly if it may present the involvement of different officers in a disappearance,” she says. “By doing that, they defend their colleagues — out of loyalty, worry of retaliation, or corruption. In some circumstances, officers are instantly concerned with the cartels, which makes pursuing inner investigations much more harmful.”

‘It’s not a canine — it’s my son’

For Julieta, the shortage of willingness to research rapidly grew to become obvious.

“The prosecutor’s workplace tells you they’ve 8,000 circumstances,” she says. “You’re quantity 8,001.

“They didn’t take my son’s case severely. They didn’t consider me.”

Regardless of presenting authorities with proof that they had gathered themselves — video footage, witness testimony, and detailed information of the world the place Sergio disappeared — Julieta’s household was ignored.

In the meantime, Julieta has been threatened whereas placing up missing-person posters of her son. She remembers one time when a person, believed to be linked to a neighborhood cartel, requested her, “Why are you placing up posters in your canine?”

“I advised him, ‘It’s not a canine or cat — it’s my son.’ Then he stated, ‘What if you happen to disappear, too?’ And I answered: ‘Go forward — what extra can you’re taking?’” Julieta recounts.

“They already took the factor I liked most,” she says. “I’m not afraid of them any extra.”

The threats haven’t stopped her from looking, however the day by the ravine is a troublesome one for Julieta. By mid-afternoon, because the day’s search begins to wind down within the blistering warmth, collective founder Jaqueline Palmeros calls over to her, hoping to supply some consolation. Jaqueline, who’s in her early 40s, wears a T-shirt with the face of her daughter, Jael Monserrat Uribe Palmeros, who was 21 when she disappeared in July 2020.

The ladies make their approach to the playground fence opening, the place Jaqueline takes a candle and a picket cross from her pocket. They place the objects on the bottom beneath the tarp and lightweight the candle, a quiet gesture of remembrance for the disappeared. The flame casts flickering shadows throughout the dust.

‘Hold them from getting killed’

Among the many police and Nationwide Guard officers who spent the day scanning for lookouts is Omar Gomez Santillon.

Gomez is a sergeant in Mexico Metropolis’s Environmental Safety Unit. He usually patrols protected pure areas to forestall unlawful logging and dumping. However lately, his duties have expanded to helping households and forensic groups in searches for the disappeared throughout the town’s forested ravines.

“Some locations are so distant and hostile that if cartels controlling the world resolve they don’t need police poking round, they could flip aggressive and even make us disappear,” says the 37-year-old. “We may find yourself thrown down the identical cliffs because the victims.”

“We’re there to forestall retaliation. Typically the folks — cartel members or neighbours working as their eyes and ears in these managed areas — watching us from a distance, are the identical ones who buried the our bodies,” Gomez explains.

On a number of patrols, armed males have confronted his unit, and at occasions, he feared he could possibly be killed. However his sharpest criticism is of the justice system. “A lot of the work accomplished by investigators on the prosecutor’s workplace [gets held up],” he says. “Circumstances stall, impunity stays, and households are left ready for solutions.”

There are seen patterns of torture on the our bodies they get well from clandestine graves, he says. “We recognise the modus operandi,” he explains. “Sure teams go away distinct marks on the our bodies they eliminate — indicators of torture, the best way they’re certain, or how and the place they’re deserted.

“By inspecting these [torture] patterns, we are able to hyperlink circumstances to particular legal organisations. However even once we get well a physique, follow-up is minimal. Investigations hardly ever proceed to prosecution, leaving households with no accountability and little probability of justice.”

Gomez blames worry, burnout and institutional neglect. Psychological assist for officers is missing. “They are saying there’s assist, however you need to ask for it privately. Most don’t — out of worry or disgrace,” he says.

“I studied criminology. I consider in justice. However we are able to’t hold pretending the system works. Households are doing the state’s job. More often than not, we’re simply there to maintain them from getting killed for it.”

Mexico Metropolis authorities — the town’s Search Fee, the Lawyer Normal’s Workplace and the C5 surveillance centre — didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s a number of requests for remark for this story.

‘Your little one is ready’

Julieta helps organise search brigades. She has discovered how one can file case studies and procure police safety — a minimum of when conducting searches in harmful areas.

“We’re not investigators, however we’ve needed to change into them,” she displays. “Each mom on the market on the lookout for the stays of their family members is doing the work the state refuses to do.”

Daniela generally finds fragments of human stays – tooth, hair or bones. These discoveries have prompted police investigations and helped map areas the place cartels have dumped our bodies, providing households faint however essential leads of their search.

As soon as, she discovered a pair of sneakers like her son’s.

When she meets moms who’re new to the collective, she urges them to not lose hope. “Someplace, your little one is ready for you,” she tells them.

Every night time, she lights a candle and gazes at a photograph of her three kids. She clings to the opportunity of a reunion.

“I didn’t have two kids,” Daniela says. “I had three. And one continues to be on the market.”