José Raúl Servín García says he will not stop searching for his son Raúl more than a year after his disappearance.
Raúl Servín was last seen on April 10, 2018 in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco.
His father returns every 15 days to his local medical forensic office to ask if they have received a body that could be that of his son.
“I keep searching. Actually, we go to many towns and forensic offices in the country with papers in hand and his DNA. I will not rest until I find him, however I have to do it,” Servín said.
He contends that his son was not a bad person, nor did he run with a bad crowd, as the staff at the Jalisco Attorney General’s Missing Persons Office has made him feel.
“Every time I go to find out something about my son, they are bothered just by seeing me,” he said. “Anything new? I ask. They just turn their angry faces, only because I go and ask.”
Disappearances are on the rise in Jalisco. There are an average of 14.5 cases per day this year, up from 8.9 in 2018.
According to the Center of Justice for Peace and Development (CEPAD), the number of disappeared or missing persons in the state totaled 3,579 in the first five months of 2019 alone.
Esperanza Chávez Cárdenas of the collective Por Amor a Ellos (For Love of Them) has been searching for her brother for five years.
“The authorities have not seen a problem of this magnitude and it has gotten out of their hands in the last eight months,” she said.
Jalisco currently has no laws to deal with forced disappearances. One was supposed to enter into force in July 2018, but the state Congress did not come to an agreement on it.
Chávez thinks legislators don’t deal with the problem because it does not directly affect them.
“I don’t wish what we’re going through on anybody, but they’re the experts in their field, and they don’t put themselves in the other person’s shoes,” she said.
As for José Raúl Servín, he merely asks authorities to do their jobs and “not revictimize us, saying that maybe my son was a bad seed, that he was a drug addict, that he was a thief, this and that. Those are their words.”
His son would have turned 21 last November.
Sources: Milenio (sp)
