Tijuana, Baja California: They Find 10 Bodies and Locate 4 Missing Persons

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Angélica Ramírez, president of the collective search for people Una Nación Busca T, and organizer of the Third Search Brigade

The discovery of 10 bodies, the location of 4 homeless people, who were being searched by their families and the recovery of two bodies from the mass grave, was the result of the Third Search Brigade in Baja California.

This was reported by Angélica Ramírez, president of the search collective Una Nación Buscando T, and organizer of the Third Search Brigade, which began on April 3 and ended on April 13.

The difference of the Third Search Brigade was that the collectives searched for missing persons alive, went to hospitals, prisons, areas where there are indigent people and the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo).

The activist detailed that most of the bodies were located in Tijuana, two of them in Arroyo Alamar; one in the Carrizo Dam; 4 in Valle de Las Palmas; and one more in Pastejé Park.

In Playas de Rosarito another body was found and in the municipality of Tecate, in the town of Jácome, the last of the bodies was located.

Alicia Larios, who was in charge of the live searches, detailed that in Mexicali three men were found, indigent, who were missing. One more within the canals of Río Tijuana’s “El Bordo”. And two bodies that were in a mass grave of Tijuana were identified.

Mercedes Salazar is looking for her 23-year-old daughter Monserrat Hernández Salazar

"There were more than 14 groups or collectives from different parts of the country, more than 100 people led these searches, in two aspects and we were in Tijuana, Ensenada, Tecate, Mexicali and Rosarito," said the president of Una Nación Buscando T.

Mercedes Salazar Hernández participated in the Third Search Brigade, who traveled from Tizayuca, Hidalgo, since her daughter Michelle Monserrat Hernández Salazar, 23, four months pregnant, disappeared on September 29, 2020, along with her partner, Javier Iván Ortega Hernández.

"I simply decided to come and join the brigade because you know that in this entity, as in all border points, there is a lot of trafficking in women, so more than anything that was what encouraged me and led me to look for her," declared the desperate mother.

And although she didn’t locate her daughter, even though it was her first experience looking for missing persons, Mercedes Salazar Hernández returned to her place of origin grateful, hoping to locate Michelle.

Angelica Ramírez said that Una Nación Buscando T will continue to carry out searches in the State, however, they have already been invited by other groups from the interior of the country to train and support them in their searches.

She added that they’ve planned to create the Fourth Search Brigade for next year, in which people from other countries will be invited to come to Baja California, since bodies of foreign people have been located.

"In the last brigade - the second - a person from Brazil was found, a bone with identifications from Brazil, in the town of La Rumorosa, where they confirmed that that person was missing," she concluded.

Source: Zeta Tijuana