112,000+ Mexicans remain missing

MEXICO CITY — When four Americans were kidnapped in the border city of Matamoros, authorities rescued the survivors within days, but thousands of Mexicans remain missing in the state long associated with cartel violence — some in cases dating back more than a decade.

Mexican authorities quickly blamed the local Gulf cartel for shooting up the Americans’ minivan after they crossed the border for cosmetic surgery Friday. They found the Americans — two dead, one injured and one apparently unharmed — early Tuesday after a massive search involving squads of Mexican soldiers and National Guard troops.

By contrast, more than 112,000 Mexicans remain missing, in many cases years or decades after they disappeared. Although a convoy of armored Mexican military trucks extracted the Americans, the only ones searching for most of the missing Mexicans are their desperate relatives.

“If these people had been Mexicans, they might still be disappeared,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University.

The Americans’ rescue provoked a special kind of fury in Tamaulipas, a border state long dominated by the warring Gulf and Northeast cartels, where the Network of Disappeared activist group estimates that 12,537 people remain missing.

“We feel complete indignation, desperation, anguish, impotence and grief,” said Delia Quiroa of the nearby city of Reynosa. She has been looking for her brother Roberto since he was kidnapped nine years ago by gunmen — probably from the same cartel.