Activist now on Mexico’s shameful list of murders

MEXICO: She led a search for the ‘‘disappeared’’ in her home state of Tamaulipas, among the most violent in Mexico, after her daughter was kidnapped in 2012.

Her strenuous efforts in the face of official inaction helped nudge authorities in the beleaguered gulf state along the Texas border to discover the partial remains of her daughter and arrest those allegedly involved in her death.

She sought protection from Mexican authorities this year after a prison break that she feared may have resulted in the escape of suspects in her daughter’s killing.

Now, Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez has joined the growing roster of activists, journalists, clergy and others slain in a wave of killings in Mexico.

Yesterday, authorities confirmed armed assailants opened fire late Thursday on Rodriguez’s home in the city of San Fernando, fatally wounding the activist. She died on the way to the hospital.

She was killed on Mexico’s Mother’s Day, a major holiday in Mexico.

May 10 has also become a symbolically charged day when the mothers and other relatives of Mexico’s legions of missing publicly demand that authorities act on the cases of their vanished loved ones.

Protests to clarify the cases of Mexico’s estimated 30,000 or so disappeared – many abducted during the country’s more than decadelong war on drugs – took place throughout Mexico on Wednesday, the same day Rodriguez was slain.

Rodriguez was part of a growing national movement of mothers and others who have sought out clandestine graves where their missing kin are believed to be buried. Some have taken picks and shovels to unearth remains from the secret graves. – LA Times