She looked for her missing brother — then she disappeard
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 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. Cano's brother, José Francisco, was abducted in 2018 and never found.
Now, she herself has vanished.
Last week, gunmen burst into her home in Salamanca, an industrial city in Mexico's central state of Guanajuato, killing her husband and son and taking her away into the night.
The abduction has highlighted one of Mexico's most haunting national tragedies: a crisis of disappearances.
Impunity is rampant, public security forces have been involved in some of these crimes and clandestine gravesites have been discovered around the country.
Cano's disappearance has dealt a devastating blow to her community in Salamanca, where cartel warfare has spurred record violence in recent years. Local 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, the spokesperson for Salamanca United in the Search for the Disappeared, a group of 206 families searching for their missing loved ones, and of which Cano is a member.
Tapia 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 more than 94,000 people are missing in Mexico, though the United Nations says that could be an undercount. The majority of cases remain unsolved, as detailed investigations are often not completed. Family members are left on their own to comb through clues and follow up on leads in desperate efforts to find their loved ones — or, perhaps, receive some closure.
“There's no protection,” Tapia, 55, said from her living room, a few blocks away from Cano's house. “We're all at risk here.” Dozens of missing person flyers crowded her dining table. Handmade embroidery on the walls paid tribute to the disappeared.
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 in the state. About 21,200 people have been killed in the past six years in Guanajuato, according to government figures, 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 2020-23.
“The search for missing people touches the interests of criminal groups, or possibly agents of the state, and therefore constitutes a threat,” said Raymundo Sandoval, a member of the Platform for Peace and Justice in Guanajuato, a coalition that offers support to the families of the disappeared. The attacks on searchers “have an immediate, inhibitory effect.”
It's unclear why Cano was targeted. She wasn't a high-profile activist and mostly did administrative work since a bad hip prevented her from going into the field.