Forced Disappearances Increase in Tamaulipas

Translated by Vato for Borderland Beat

13 year old Milynali is an US citizen, she disappeared returning from the US


El Diario. 9-24-2012.

Distrito Federal.(EFE) -- Forced disappearances have increased at an "alarming" rate in several Mexican states, like Tamaulipas, one of the most violent states in the country, where the press has been silenced and complaints to "incompetent" authorities are the exception, according to victims and activists.

In that region in the northeast part of the country, which the organization Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD: Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia) considers "practically a zone of exception", or a "failed state", Milynali Pina Perez, a 13 year old girl, disappeared more than a month ago, along with three cousins and her uncle.

In an interview with EFE, Milynali's mother, Graciela Perez, narrates her tragedy, and with it that of many families who have lost track of a loved one in a country with more than 24,000 disappeared persons, according to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH: Comision Nacional de Derechos Humanos). 



"I'm not afraid," says the 43 year old teacher of English, convinced that the only way to find her daughter, a U.S. citizen, and her four relatives is to carry out her own search because the authorities haven't done anything. 

Mother is unafraid to sepak out

Her daughter, her brother Ignacio and three of her nephews disappeared August 14 in Tamaulipas when they were coming back from a trip to the United States.

The last phone contact they had with their family, originally from the city of Tamuin, San Luis Potosi, was when they were in Ciudad Mante, only two hours from their destination. Their uncertainty grew when her relatives stopped answering their phones, recalls Perez. The next day, they filed a complaint with the Public Ministry.

The five persons, who were traveling in a pickup truck back to Tamuin, are classified as "disappeared" because no group has asked for ransom payment, she explains. 

The Public Ministry (PM: investigating and prosecuting entity) says that that zone is "very dangerous" and that's why (it's agents) do not go to the scene of these incidents to obtain information. While the military personnel who arrived a few months ago to Ciudad Mante are looking for the family, they have no capacity to investigate, says the ministry. "Nothing disappears by magic," states Perez, who confesses that her family "is devastated" and feels "powerless" at the lack of results.

"We have tried the government (agency) road and have accomplished nothing," she points out after naming, one by one, the doors she has knocked on, from the Presidency to the Fiscalia (State Attorney General's office), through the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros and the FBI.

"I feel that my daughter is alive," says Gabriela, with tears in her eyes, who tried to find out from a photograph shown to her by the military whether her daughter was among the ten bodies found in a clandestine grave in Xicotencatl, near Mante. 

Vanished between point A and B, only 79 miles to Tamuin

She traveled to Mante to make an identification, but when she got there, the body had been buried, and she had to be satisfied with a photograph, which left her full of doubts, which is why she wants a DNA comparison test to be sure.

Before a cadaver goes to a common grave, authorities are required to take DNA samples and prepare a file with all of the victim's information and compare it with reports, but many times this is not done, MUCD's Juan Francisco Torres Landa tells EFE.

Graciela believes, "because of the way they operate," that the Zetas deprived her relatives of their freedom to use them as "merchandise." Vicente Hernandez, a friend of the family, explains that the Gulf Cartel and its former armed element, "Los Zetas", are disputing control of this (drug) corridor to the U.S. 

The way they operate is they "capture people to extort, exchange prisoners or to cover their escapes. They also keep victims in safe houses and expose them when the authorities arrive so they can make their escape," he says.

All this takes place without the authorities doing anything about it. Residents don't file complaints, many have been threatened and fear for their lives, says Graciela, who goes on to say that businesses won't even allow her to put up photographs of her disappeared relatives.

"You can smell the fear" in southern Tamaulipas, the forgotten part of the state, in contrast with the north, which captured the limelight in 2010 with the death of 72 migrants, most of them from Central America, in the municipality of San Fernando," she says.

The bodies of the 72 migrants executed in Tamaulipas in August 2010

This is why she has resorted to (filing) a formal complaint, to draw attention  to her case and to many other cases in Tamaulipas, where authorities refuse to provide information about persons reported as "disappeared."   Questioned by EFE, Ruben Dario Rios, the spokesman for the state Attorney General, limited himself to providing the reporter the statistics found on the agency's web page, where among the most common crimes were vehicle and home robberies. 

Homicides, disappearances and kidnappings do not even show up on a list of the ten most common crimes in a state that, according to Torres Landa, is in a "state of emergency: "If police officers admit that they cannot carry out a field investigation...because they feel defenseless, that sounds very much like a failed state." 

This situation is not limited to Tamaulipas. "The list (of states) now is really very long," proof that Felipe Calderon's strategy of attacking crime indiscriminately, "has failed miserably," he adds.

Even though the "road is uncertain", Graciela says she will keep on knocking on doors until "someone turns around and sees me."