Loved Ones Of Missing Residents Disappear
SALAMANCA, Mexico — Only a few torn pieces of the crime scene tape around Lorenza Cano’s house are left. The shards of glass from the front door are gone. So are the bullet casings.
All that remains is the hope that Ms. Cano will be found.
The 55-year-old activist is one of hundreds of women in Mexico who became advocates for the country’s disappeared population after their own loved ones went missing. Ms. Cano’s brother, José Francisco, was abducted in 2018 and never found.
Now, she has vanished. Recently, gunmen burst into her home in Salamanca, in Mexico’s central state of Guanajuato, killing her husband and son and taking her away.
The abduction has highlighted Mexico’s crisis of disappearances. Impunity is rampant, public security forces have sometimes been involved, and graves have been found around the country.
Ms. Cano’s disappearance has devastated Salamanca. Searchers are now worried about their own vulnerability.
“We are left with the question: ‘Now when are they going to come for me and take me away?’ ” said Alma Lilia Tapia of Salamanca United in the Search for the Disappeared, a collective of 206 families searching for their missing loved ones, and of which Ms. Cano is a member.
Ms. Tapia, 55, has been looking for her son, Gustavo Daryl, since he was abducted in 2018 from his food stand, apron on and grill tongs in hand.
The government says over 94,000 people are missing in Mexico, though the United Nations says that could be an undercount. The majority of cases remain unsolved. Families are left on their own to find their loved ones.
“There’s no protection,” Ms. Tapia said. “We’re all at risk.”
Violence in Guanajuato has surged in recent years as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the local Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel battle for control. About 21,200 people have been killed in the past six years in Guanajuato, according to the government, making it one of Mexico’s deadliest states.
Those left to search for the disappeared have also become targets. In Guanajuato, the U.N.’s human rights office documented the killing of at least five people searching for their missing relatives from 2020 through 2023.
President Andrés Manuel López of Mexico recently said, “Every day we are protecting the people and there is no impunity for anyone.” But searchers in Salamanca say they have little faith in local and federal officials.
“We have no support from the government, no security or anything,” said María Elena Pérez, 62, a member of the collective whose daughter, Martha Leticia, was abducted in 2018.
Julio César Prieto Gallardo, Salamanca’s mayor, defended his administration. “We give support, regardless of whether they deny it,” he said.
Recently, two men were arrested and charged with murder and disappearance in connection to Ms. Cano’s case.
Francisca Caudillo, 50, is one of the few who have found a missing loved one. Last July, she was on site when the collective unearthed the body of her son, Martín Eduardo, from a landfill. She had been looking for over two years. When his remains were returned home, Ms. Caudillo had flowers, live music and fireworks to commemorate him.
“I like it when I find someone, whoever it is,” she said. “It gives me a little bit of peace to know they’re reunited with their family.”