10,000 March in Jalisco and Mexico City to Protest Violence and Disappearances

"Morogris" for Borderland Beat

12,000 people have disappeared in Jalisco since the start of Mexico's drug war in 2006

Over 10,000 people attended a protest in Guadalajara, Jalisco, on Tuesday following the murder of three siblings last weekend: Ana Karen, 24, Luis Ángel, 29, and José Alberto González Moreno, 32.

Gunmen kidnapped them from their home on Friday night and they were found dead on Sunday morning in the city's outskirts. Some of the gunmen were wearing bulletproof vests with the insignias of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

The protest, organized by the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), transversed from the school's rectory to the Monument of the Disappeared. Academics, students, and residents of the Guadalajara metropolitan area attended carrying photos of missing people.

In Jalisco alone, over 12,000 people have gone missing since the start of Mexico's drug war in 2006. About 80,000 people are currently missing across all of Mexico.

UdeG rector Ricardo Villanueva Lomeli spoke to the crowd in front of the Monument of the Disappeared. He lamented the "normalization" of violence in Jalisco and demanded authorities to ensure security for its citizens. He also asked Jalisco governor Enrique Alfaro to not "politicize" the siblings' killings and asked for a prompt resolution of the case.

Families and friends of missing persons placed over 70 images of their loves ones on the walls of the roundabout. Many others walked through the streets of Guadalajara carrying banners with statements directed to authorities.

A mother hugs a protestor in front of one of the murals. She has been looking for her son, who disappeared in Jalisco and has not been found.

On Monday (Mother's Day) in Mexico City, hundreds of people marched demanding authorities to help them find their missing children.

Participants chanted slogans like "Where are our children, where are they?” and “Child, listen, your mother is searching for you."

This march occurs annually in Mexico.

Secretary of Interior Olga Sanchez met with some of the mothers early Monday and said that her government has a "desire to find out the location of their relatives".

But some of the mothers present said that these promises rung hollow in the past.

Martha Estela Arana, from the northern border state of Chihuahua, has spent the last 11 years searching for her son, Alfredo Quesada Arana. She hasn't gotten any firm information in all those years.

“It has been a pilgrimage, searching, searching and searching for justice,” Arana said.

“Administrations come and go, and it's always the same. And we will continue searching, searching for them, to the last breath in my body.”

But this year it was not just mothers. The problem has gone on so long — and so many people are believed to have wound up in clandestine graves — that now some children have grown up and are searching for their disappeared parents.

Maricarmen Cardona, now 23, began accompanying her mother at marches when she was about 11 demanding authorities find her father, who disappeared along with a dozen other people in the northern border city of Piedras Negras in 2009.

“It was what we did together,” Cardona said of her mother. “She died in 2016 and never got any answer about where my father was.”

Many of the disappeared were abducted and presumably killed by drug cartels or kidnapping gangs, but authorities and police are suspected in some cases.

#VideosLaJornada / Protestan en Guadalajara por el asesinato de los 3 hermanos

El rector de la universidad señaló que calculaba que esta manifestación, pese al poco tiempo con el que se organizó, era de las más numerosas en meses recientes

NOTA: https://t.co/oSu6JlSksT pic.twitter.com/cgxjpBdkwk

— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) May 12, 2021

Sources: La Jornada; La Jornada (Video); El Heraldo de Mexico; ABC News