Mexican families in need of closure

 What it is happening in Mexico these days goes beyond the most sickening vision that anybody could have.

As in the worse horror movie ever seen, Mexican authorities have been discovering day by day the bodies of 145 people buried in more than a dozen of different mass graves –narcofosas– in the region of San Fernando in the northern state of Tamaulipas.  According to preliminary reports, many of those people were migrants in their way to the U.S. and they were forced off busses and then executed by organized crime.

To make things even more shocking, 16 police officers are under federal investigations because the suspicion that they allegedly covered up the criminals involved in the majority of those killings.

At the same time, more narcofosas have been discovered in other Mexican states. In Los Mochis, Sinaloa, 13 bodies were found this week, while in Nogales, Sonora, other five bodies were discovered. Not enough, authorities in Durango found the bodies of five people and six heads buried in a mass grave Thursday.

The horrifying discovery of these bodies is shedding light on one of the most serious and perturbing problems related to the violence today: the undetermined number of people, who has just disappeared after being kidnapped or “lifted” (levantados) by unknown reasons.

There is not a precise figure to establish the magnitude of the problem, but according to the National Human Rights Commission, around 5,397 people have been reported as disappeared between 2006 and 2011. People have disappeared from practically all the Mexican states, but some entities, such as Guerrero, Chiapas, Michoacán, Sinaloa, Sonora, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Coahuila y Durango have the highest numbers of disappeared.

Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, author of “Fuego Cruzado” –a recently released book that gives voice to the victims of the violence– has extensively documented the heartbreaking journey of thousands of families in the search for their relatives. They have gone from police stations, to hospitals, shelters and to finally to all the places where mass graves have been discovered around the country.

As Turati documented, many of these families rushed to Taxco, Guerrero, in June of 2010, when 55 bodies were discovered in the depths of a mine. If their relatives were not there, they would go to other places where mass graves were discovered. What they want is to know what happened to their relatives, to have closure, to be able to pray and to mourn for them.

There is all kind of people among the disappeared: farm workers, taxi drivers, businessmen, tourists, students, drug dealers, journalists, politicians, police officers, house keepers, migrants, military men and even children. “Entire families have disappeared including old man and children. The younger one is a 3-year-old boy, whose name is in a list of disappeared in Coahuila”, Turati wrote.

In the state of Tamaulipas today, dozens of families are waiting outside of the morgue for DNA test. They are placed in the worse scenario, where they are probably praying not to find the remains of their relatives in the pile of bodies, but at the same time, they need to know if they are dead, to have closure and mourn for them.

Tamaulipas is not just showing how decomposed is the country today, but also how deep and painful is the wound that organized crime and the drug war is inflicting in the Mexican society. 

And we still don’t hit bottom.

---

 

A note: Marcela Turati's book "Fuego Cruzado" will be presented at UTEP April 27 at 6 p.m. at the Stanlee and Rubin Center Auditorium.

 

Comments

[dbigkanunna]

Heartbreaking??
What is heartbreaking is the proud Mexican people who have to BEG for their government to do something. And everyone is surprised when nothing changes.
The Mexican government is CORRUPT!
CORRUPT!
Nothing will change. Nothing will happen.
The Mexican people are POWERLESS!
And the final chapter has not been written. I guess when the number hits 100,000?
When stories are written about the Killing Fields of
Tamaulipas?
No. The ones that can change things peacefully do not care and the ones that could change the government are powerless.

[Tom]

There in lies your problem... Why don't you PROUD Mexicans take your country back...How come you expect others to do that for you?