Mexican newspaper cutting of a mother's search for her two disappeared sons in clandestine mass graves
In Latin American countries such as Colombia and Mexico thousands of persons are reported as missing every year. The scale of the problem is such that law-enforcement agencies are overwhelmed and make little or no effort to solve cases. Too often they are themselves either directly involved or complicit in the crimes. A report in April 2022 by the United Nations Committee of Enforced Disappearances (CED) concluded that in Mexico impunity on missing person cases is ‘almost absolute’. The Committee also expressed profound concern for a ‘forensic crisis’ which had, at the time of its visit in November 2021, more than 52,000 unidentified deceased people in common graves, forensic facilities, universities and other locations. The CED added that the unacceptable figures do not include ‘bodies not yet found nor thousands of fragments of human remains that families and search commissions collect weekly in clandestine graves.’ The Mexican National Register of Disappeared and Missing Persons reported in May 2022 that since 1964 there have been around 100,000 persons disappeared. Almost 84 percent of these have disappeared since 2006. One notorious case involved the disappearance of 43 teacher training college students in September 2014. They were on their way to a socio-political rally in the town of Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero on commandeered buses when stopped by local police who handed them over to a cartel gang. The students have not been seen since. One Mexican government minister has described Mexico as an ‘enormous hidden grave’. In the absence of political will from government and faced with corruption among politicians, police and armed forces, non-state actors, such as relatives of the disappeared, have taken it upon themselves to conduct searches.
Size: 3648px × 5028px
Location: Mexico
Photo credit: © Frank Nowikowski / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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