Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
In Mexico, groups search for ‘disappeared’
VERACRUZ, Mexico –– They gather shortly after daybreak outside a minimarket, the tropical heat thickening, the dawn haze in lethargic retreat. They hug and catch up, purchase water and snacks for the upcoming ordeal. New volunteers are welcomed.
“You’re not alone,” Lucia Diaz, a leader of the group, assures a young woman on her inaugural outing. “We are all sharing in this together.”
They lug basics: shovels, machetes, hammers, a metal rod to test the earth, a portable canopy to block the broiling sun. Diaz and about 15 others head off in several pickups, passing a police guard and arriving at a mosquito-infested field where everyone sprays on repellent and dons masks and gloves for the grisly task ahead.
Their objective: human remains, long buried, now emerging from the earth, providing clues to unspeakable fates.
Searchers on the northern fringes of Veracruz say they have uncovered at least 80 clandestine graves in the last eight weeks.
The men and women combing this inhospitable stretch are part of an extraordinary, nationwide movement — grieving relatives and friends who took up shovels and picks after exasperating rounds of visits to police stations, hospitals, shelters and morgues. They complain that police, often implicated in illegal abductions — sometimes in cahoots with criminal gangs — have mostly taken reports and done little more.
Mexico’s decade-long, military-led crackdown on drug cartels has swelled the multitudes of
— the “disappeared” — who vanish without a trace. Their ranks include many with no known link to criminal gangs — kidnapped for ransom, robbery or revenge, or caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Led by a tip, brigades of volunteers with their rudimentary tools have combed the field adjacent to a residential district called Colinas de Santa Fe almost daily since Aug. 2.
“If these aren’t our loved ones buried here, they are someone else’s sons and daughters,” says Martha Gonzalez, who joined Diaz and other volunteer searchers this morning. She is determined to learn what happened to her son, Luis Alberto Valenzuela Gonzalez, a police officer who disappeared three years ago.
Killers routinely remove all traces of identity on their victims, and authorities have yet to link any of the missing to the bone fragments, skulls, teeth, hair and clothing unearthed here, often concealed in black plastic trash bags.
“We know that in one grave we found 15 black bags,” says volunteer Rufino Bustamante Rosique, whose son is among the missing. “In another grave we found 15 skulls.”
Catalyzing the search movement was the disappearance on Sept. 26, 2014, of 43 students from the town of Ayotzinapa, in Guerrero state. The push by relatives to uncover the fate of the students — presumed killed in a case implicating local officials and police — inspired the improbable wave of widows, parents, siblings and friends of the disappeared.
“For years, many of us felt isolated, like we were the only ones going through this,” recalls Diaz, who has been consumed by the search for her son, Luis Guillermo Lagunes Diaz, a popular disc jockey and events promoter in Veracruz who was last seen June 28, 2013. “We have since found out there are hundreds, thousands of others going through the same emotions, the same pain. Now, we can share it.”
Diaz helped found El Solecito Collective, the group making the grim discoveries in Colinas de Santa Fe. The collective grew from a WhatsApp chat group and has more than 50 members, mostly mothers and wives of the disappeared.
The collective has badgered state and federal authorities for help
During the rally, young men distributed what appeared to be advertising fliers and quickly left. The women paid scant attention at first, but the papers turned out to be handdrawn maps of the field in Colinas de Santa Fe, marked with crosses. The activists suspect that criminal elements turned over the maps in an act of compassion for the relatives of the disappeared.
Last year, authorities responding to a tip from an inmate had found scattered human remains in the field, but the case apparently was never pursued. The collective pressured authorities and finally received permission to enter the site in August. Forensic anthropologists provided training sessions on what to look for and how to proceed.
Providing experience on-site has been Guadalupe Contreras, whose fame has spread under the moniker El Ultimo Buscador — the final searcher.
His son, Antonio Ivan Contreras, an auto mechanic, disappeared four years ago, apparently while working in his shop in Guerrero.
Following the notorious Ayotzinapa case, Contreras joined the search movement and became expert at using a metal rod to probe the earth for possible remains. He focuses on subtle clues: signs of digging, trash, discarded clothing. He has been credited with finding dozens of graves in Guerrero.
He brought his singular expertise to Veracruz, and this morning the activists begin digging in several spots. T
Bustamante lost a son too. Cristo Bustamante, a beach-side trinket vendor, was 26 when he was detained by armed men two years ago on a busy Veracruz street.
“We are not trying to bring anyone to justice for what happened — that is the purview of the authorities and the judicial system,” Bustamante said. “We just want to find our sons and daughters.”