Family members of a woman who disappeared three years ago installed an electronic counter outside the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) on Thursday to remind authorities that she hasn’t been found more than 1,000 days after she went missing.
Pamela Gallardo Volante disappeared in southern Mexico City on November 5, 2017, after attending an electronic music concert.
Assisted by the Human Rights and Social Action Justice Group, a non-governmental organization, family members of the missing woman plugged in an electronic sign outside the FGJ headquarters that showed that Gallardo had been missing for 1,095 days.
María del Carmen Volante, the missing woman’s mother, said the installation of the electronic counter was not meant to be an attack on Attorney General Ernestina Godoy, but to get her attention.
She said it will serve as a reminder to Godoy and other FGJ officials that she will never stop looking for her daughter and they shouldn’t either. Volante said she and her other children paid for the electronic counter with their own money.
David Peña, a representative of the human rights group, said the counter will remind the FGJ every day that it is “not doing its job.”
“We ask the authorities not to remove it because [installing] it is an act of remembering Pamela, it’s to tell her that we’re still looking for her, that we’re not going to rest until we find her,” he said.
Recent changes at the FGJ and the resignation of Nelly Montealegre as chief of the gender crimes division has stalled investigations into many cases, reported the newspaper El Universal.
It said that family members of victims have to ask personally that the FGJ restart investigations but in many cases have been unable to secure appointments.
Volante said the new chief of the gender crimes division, Laura Borbolla, has refused to meet with her. She also told El Universal about a group she formed two years ago to keep the pressure on authorities and carry out searches for missing people.
Called Hasta Encontrarles (Until We Find Them), the group is currently made up of the members of 16 families of missing persons, Volante said, adding that they joined forces “to demand justice.”
She said that she became an activist out of love for her daughter and was soon joined by other like-minded mothers.
“This collective is built on love for our missing sons and daughters. We’ll continue the fight,” Volante said.
The federal government presented a report in July that said that there are more than 73,000 missing person in Mexico. Almost 98% of that number disappeared after 2006, the year in which former president Felipe Calderón launched the so-called war on drugs.
Source: El Universal (sp)
