Residents protested against the process with a highway roadblock on Sunday.
Residents of a community where construction of an Isthmus of Tehuantepec industrial park has been approved have called the consultation process a “simulation.”
Members of an indigenous community in San Blas Atempa, Oaxaca, complain that signatures obtained for approval of the project were forged by the administrative body that oversees agricultural policy.
The industrial park is one of 10 that are being built as part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor project (CIIT), which includes the modernization of the railroad linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans between Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
The dissatisfied residents say the signatures of more than 50 people were forged, including those of two former inhabitants of Puente Madera who have died.
The community says it began the process to nullity the judgement in favor of the construction on March 14.
They claimed in a statement that Mayor Antonino Morales pressured them to attend the consultation with threats and promises of social support and social programs.
Residents say the consultation process failed to address the environmental, economic, social and cultural damage the construction might cause, instead focusing solely on the benefits it would bring to the local population.
“The process has not been free, and much less informed,” the statement said.
Residents complained that consultations are now being held behind closed doors between agrarian authorities, landowners, and state and federal authorities in the communities of Santa María Mixtequilla and Ciudad Ixtepec.
In eight states, including Guerrero, where these boys were armed to help protect their town from narcos, violence has reduced life expectancy.
The life expectancy of Mexicans declined by as much as a year between 2005 and 2010 due to violence generated by organized crime groups, according to a new government report.
Citing a journal article on the impact of violence on life expectancy, the federal Security Ministry (SSPC) said the amount of time a person can expect to live declined by six months to one year in several states in the five-year period, which coincides with the first years of the militarized “war on drugs” launched by former president Felipe Calderón in late 2006.
The states where citizens’ life expectancy decreased were Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit, Michoacán, Tlaxcala, Guerrero and Morelos. The reduction in life expectancy in other states was between one and five months.
The homicide numbers recorded in recent years are even higher than those in the 2005–2010 period, meaning that the impact of violence on Mexicans’ life expectancy is now even greater. However, the SSPC report didn’t include any data for the period following 2010.
The life expectancy in Mexico was 75 in 2019, according to the World Bank.
Entitled Violence Linked to Firearms, the report also cited data that showed that 40% of adult Mexicans who responded to a security survey late last year reported that they frequently see gunfights or hear gunshots.
That figure rose to 82.7% among residents of Fresnillo, Zacatecas — a municipality overtaken by organized crime, according to the mayor, 75.4% among people who live in the sprawling Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa and 75.3% among denizens of Chimalhuacán, México state.
Other cities where more than 60% of respondents to the national statistics agency’s 29th National Survey on Urban Public Security reported seeing gunfights or hearing gunshots frequently included Ecatepec, México state; Tijuana, Baja California; Reynosa, Tamaulipas; Naucalpan, México state; Cuernavaca, Morelos; and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
The SSPC report also included data that showed that the percentage of homicides committed with firearms has increased from 15% in 1997 to almost 70% in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021.
State police inspect weapons seized from local officers.
Municipal police were disarmed Monday in Playa Vicente, Veracruz, where state police took charge.
The 43 officers, including their chief, have been sent to Xalapa, the state capital, for evaluations after accusations surfaced of voter intimidation related to the June 6 elections.
The force was taken by surprise by an air and land operation conducted by the army, the National Guard and state police.
Protests erupted last week in the community of Nuevo Ixcatlán against the Mayor Gabriel López Álvarez and trustee Yamilet López López.
The protesters accused them of driving around the community in civilian vehicles to intimidate residents and attempt to force them to vote for the incumbent National Action Party (PAN).
Mayor Álvarez said he disagreed with the officers being disarmed. “They have been treated as if they were criminals, there will be people who, given the scenario and the [electoral] process, will gain some pleasure from this. However, this is not only an affront to the municipal police and the mayor, but also to the institution of municipal government and citizens,” he said.
“I want to ask the state government, the federal government and the minister of public security to carefully review the truth of the situation in Playa Vicente. Those of us who live here know who are the good people and who are the harmful ones. Today, it seems that those who are harmful to society are being heard more. I hope that our officers will be back this week,” he added.
Playa Vicente has been the scene of violent events in recent years such as multi-homicides, disappearances and the discovery of clandestine graves and the upcoming elections are being hotly contested.
This year state police have intervened in seven municipal police forces in Veracruz, taking full control of four.
With their Spanish acoustic guitars, Renaissance-style breeches and gold-trimmed doublets and flair for the dramatic Guanajuato's estudiantinas deliberately evoke entertainment from a bygone era.
As the murmurs of the day fade over the colonial curves of the tourist city of Guanajuato, the moon rises to challenge the sun’s command and a group of darkly-clad strangers prepares its nightly invasion: the bohemian estudiantinas emerge from the shadows, guitars in hand, ready to take on the night.
These roving musicians dressed proudly in regal attire that recalls the European Renaissance have prowled, plucked and chanted their way through Guanajuato’s alleyways for almost six decades. Armed with only acoustic stringed instruments and the power of their lungs, they belt out ballads recounting the tales of generations past.
They are part of the city’s fabric and reveal much of its hidden story.
In the streets surrounding the grandeur of Guanajuato’s Juárez Theater, they are hard to miss. They rove from one callejon (alleyway) to the next, wearing breeches to the knees, tights that reach up to the waist, ruffled lace shirts, and dark robes embroidered with gold.
What began in 13th-century Iberia as a way for students to earn money or something to eat was revived as a tourist attraction by the University of Guanajuato in 1963.
Many estudiantinas are college students looking for a way to make a bit of money. But one says the role has unexpectedly taught him people skills.
The tours they give, or callejoneadas as they’re known, take dozens of people on a musical waltz through some of the oldest parts of the city. Comedy is prominent in the performance: the audience is rallied to join in with the music, and the most enthusiastic are cajoled into acting out some of the city’s famous fables.
It is not uncommon for a bride and groom to hire them to tour with the wedding party and guests through the city center.
Most tours culminate in the Callejón del Beso (Alley of the Kiss), a place of Shakespearean tragedy where, according to local legend, noble-blooded Ana fell in love with the humble miner Carlos. The alleyway is so narrow that the couple’s forbidden relationship could flourish from opposing windows. Woefully, the affair was cut short when Ana’s obsessive father indicated his disapproval, meeting her heart with a dagger.
Armando Cordero, 26, came to Guanajuato to study industrial relations. He has been a proud member of the Imperial Estudiantina group for more than seven years and says that the tradition grew organically through necessity.
“The estudiantina tradition was born of students of limited means,” he said. “Guanajuato is a city of students, and there are a lot who arrive here who don’t have enough to pay for their university fees. That was true in my case, so I became an estudiantina to pay for it.”
“It’s a way of life. It taught me to feel alive, to speak to the public, to manage people, to party and to meet girls,” he explained with a smile.
With its palatial squares and cobblestone streets, Guanajuato evokes nostalgia for a medieval era that the city isn’t old enough to have experienced.
Upon first glancing at an estudiantina, the casual visitor might rub their eyes and wonder how they were unknowingly transported to medieval Spain.
“This city is known as a mini-Europe; most of the architecture was copied from Europe,” local tour guide Enrique Zavala Chávez, 23, said.
Speaking from the steps of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas building, a 19th-century granary where one of the early battles for Mexico’s independence was fought, potter Gregorio Mayorga, 49, spoke proudly of the city’s European roots.
“[The Spanish] conquered us, and 90% of their customs were assimilated. There were some really good Spanish people … history tells us of many Spaniards that helped in the independence struggle,” he said.
The ringing bells of the churches, the palatial squares, the cobblestone streets all evoke an intense nostalgia. But Guanajuato doesn’t only reminisce over its days of abundant glory. The estudiantinas are an example of how the city fantasizes of a medieval world, a world that it never really knew.
It turns out those dreams go back to the very men that founded it.
Estudiantina performances get the crowd to laugh, interact or sing along.
The Middle Ages had already ended before Hernán Cortés planted his flag in the Aztec world, but it seems no one had told the conquistadors, who were apparently still in a nostalgic mood, dreaming of pulling up a chair at King Arthur’s Round Table. Singing from the Arthurian hymnbook and fueled by its tales of valor that heavily influenced Spanish literature of the period, they, too, were on a crusade, searching for a holy grail.
In Guanajuato, where the silver flowed, they thought they’d found it. Born of colonialism, the new city was raised to serve the Spanish Crown’s insatiable desire for minerals, and the conquistadors were driven by ideals of heroism and boyish mythologies of knights, dragons and jewels that inspired its discovery and foundation.
Guanajuato’s medieval dream inhabits not only the fictional but the physical world too. One might be fooled by the extravagant castle sitting proudly on a hill. Though convincingly primed for a Moorish invasion, its cannons have yet to be rolled out: the Santa Cecilia Hotel, which was actually built in the 1950s on the property of an old mining hacienda, longingly overlooks the city, no doubt yearning to fulfill its military duties.
And every October, the city revives a world more familiar to those conquistadors for the Cervantino arts festival. The three-week cultural binge melds opera, music, dance, theater, street performance, visual arts, film and literature, all in the name of medieval fiction. The festival has been host to some esteemed guests in search of that fantasy: Queen Elizabeth and the late Prince Phillip of England once dropped by, as did King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain.
The Cervantino was inspired by Miguel de Cervantes, the 16th-century Spanish literary great whose masterpiece Don Quixote was published in 1605. Cervantes himself died in 1616, over 60 years before the city of Guanajuato as we know it today was founded in 1679, and over a century before its mining boom arrived in the 18th century.
In a near-perfect allegory for the Spanish imperial project, the protagonist of Don Quixote loses his senses. Blinded by romantic ideals of chivalry and knighthood, he places himself as the central hero of his own story, gallivanting, courting and proclaiming, all in the name of his nation.
The city associates itself strongly with the character of Don Quixote. There are many statues of him throughout the city.
An “almost-dreamed rebirth” were the words of Mexican poet Margarita Paz Paredes when she congratulated the city for reviving the works of Cervantes. Unknowingly, she had neatly described Guanajuato itself.
Amid the quiet corners of this medieval mirage, the estudiantinas have found a fitting home.
• There are 12 estudiantina groups in Guanajuato, all offering different musical tours through the city’s alleyways. The tours begin in the evening, typically departing at 8, 9 and 10 p.m. Tickets cost around 180 pesos, and vendors can be seen in their uniforms in the vicinity of Jardín de la Unión.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry called for restraint.
The government has expressed “grave concern” over escalating violence in Israel and Palestine which has left at least two Israelis and 20 Palestinians dead, including nine children, and many more wounded.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) called on all sides to “reject violence and provocation,” reiterating its support to help resolve the crisis through dialogue with a two-state solution.
The ministry expressed its dismay at recent conflict in East Jerusalem and at possible evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.
“Mexico expresses its grave concern over the escalation of violence that is being experienced today in Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as in other locations, and calls for restraint by all parties and to avoid any further damage to the civilian population,” the SRE said on social media.
The statement comes despite Mexico’s own violence statistics which place it as the 13th worst country for intentional homicides, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Study on Homicide report. Israel ranks 166th and Palestine 211th.
Seven Mexican cities were among the world’s 10 most violent in 2020, and 18 were among the top 50, according to a study by the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSPJP).
The president's approval rating according to the 'poll of polls.' Approval is in blue, disapproval in orange. oraculus
Almost six in 10 Mexicans are unimpressed with the efforts of the federal government to combat corruption while two-thirds grade it poorly for its performance on public security, according to a new poll.
Conducted in April and early May by the media partners El Financiero and Bloomberg, the poll found that 59% of 2,000 respondents believe that the government led by President López Obrador is doing a bad job on fighting corruption, a scourge the president has pledged to eliminate but which continues to tarnish his administration.
That’s a 13-point jump compared to March and a 22-point increase compared to January.
The percentage of respondents who believe that the government is doing a good job on combatting corruption fell to 23% in April from 33% in March and 36% in January.
Out of four areas considered by the poll, the government fared worst in public security. Only 18% of respondents said the López Obrador administration is doing a good job addressing the ongoing high levels of violence while 67% said the opposite.
The El Financiero/Bloomberg poll: blue is good, orange is bad.
The former figure fell from 20% in March and 26% in January while the latter increased from 61% last month and 57% at the start of the year.
Despite Mexico having the fourth highest Covid-19 death toll in the world, the government achieved its best poll result in the area of health, with 36% of respondents saying that it is doing a good job. However, a slightly higher percentage of those polled – 38% – said that the government is performing badly in the area.
Even though the El Financiero/Bloomberg poll shows there is significant discontent with the government, the ruling Morena party and its allies remain on track to win a comprehensive victory in the June 6 Chamber of Deputies election, according to predictions based on the latest “poll of polls” collated by the website Oraculus.
It predicts that Morena will win 44%, or 220, of the 500 seats in the lower house of federal Congress and that its allies, the Labor Party (PT) and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), will each win around 9%, or 43 and 45, respectively.
If that occurs, the Morena-PT-PVEM alliance will win 308 of the 500 seats, 300 of which are elected directly and 200 by proportional representation. That would give the coalition a strong majority in the lower house but not the two-thirds majority needed to approve constitutional changes.
Morena and its allies, which include the Social Encounter Party (PES), currently hold 334 lower house seats but Oraculus predicts that the PES – which currently occupies 20 seats – won’t win any seats at the June 6 election.
Oraculus predicts that the three-party coalition consisting of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) will win a combined 37% of seats.
It predicts that 14% will go to the PRI, 17% to the PAN and 6% to the PRD. It anticipates that the alliance will win a total of 180 seats in the 500-seat chamber and that the other 12 seats will go to the Citizens Movement party.
Oraculus’ latest predictions show that the PRI-PAN-PRD alliance has made up some ground since late last month. The website previously predicted that the Morena-PT-PVEM alliance would win 337 of the lower house seats and that the coalition of opposition parties would take 152.
García, left, and de la Garza are under investigation.
With less than four weeks remaining before the June 6 elections, the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) announced Monday it is investigating the two leading candidates for governor in Nuevo León for electoral crimes.
The FGR said in a statement issued Monday night that it had received complaints against Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate Adrián de la Garza for using social programs for political purposes – effectively vote buying – and against Citizens Movement (MC) party candidate Samuel García for receiving resources of “illicit origin” and using them for electoral gain.
The case against de la Garza, who is second in most polls behind García, is related to asking for women’s votes in exchange for a so-called “pink card,” which they could use to withdraw cash if the PRI-PRD candidate wins the election.
The FGR said that offering the cards to women amounts to vote-buying, a tactic with which the once omnipotent PRI has long been associated. It noted that it has received a “large number of citizens complaints” against de la Garza for “violating article 19 of the constitution, which orders preventative prison for the use of social programs with electoral purposes.”
However, the FGR didn’t say whether it would seek to detain the candidate, a former mayor of Monterrey.
The case against García, a former senator perhaps best known for scolding his wife for “showing too much leg” during an Instagram Live video last August, relates to “allegedly criminal acts” committed by him, his father, his wife and his wife’s father, the FGR said.
The Attorney General’s Office said it has received several complaints, including one from the federal government’s Financial Intelligence Unit, against the candidate and his family members for allegedly committing offenses set out in article 15 of the General Electoral Crimes Law, “which refers to contributions in money or kind, as well as funds or goods of illicit origin, used illegally for electoral purposes.”
The announcement of the investigation into de la Garza comes just days after President López Obrador accused him of vote-buying at two successive press conferences last week, triggering claims that the supposedly autonomous FGR had been ordered to conduct a probe.
“A coincidence or could it be that they follow orders from the National Palace at the Attorney General’s Office?” asked columnist Salvador García Soto in the newspaper El Universal.
He also wrote that if anyone doubted that López Obrador and his government were willing to do anything to maintain and gain power, the FGR’s announcement confirmed that they are. Using the FGR to go after two opposition candidates who are leading the polls is a “subject of scandal” and a “clear political use of a supposedly autonomous institution,” García Soto wrote.
Standing to benefit from the FGR’s probe into the two leading candidates is the aspirant for Morena – Mexico’s ruling party – Clara Luz Flores, who trails both de la Garza and García by a double digit margin, according to a recent Reforma newspaper poll.
Clara Luz Flores, the Morena candidate, stands to benefit.
De la Garza, who has also faced allegations of links to organized crime, said in a Twitter message Monday night that he is a victim of political persecution for “proposing to protect the women of Nuevo León.”
For his part, García said that the only thing he is guilty of is “shooting up in the polls.”
“I’m convinced that the only reason behind all the complaints, attacks and defamations that have emerged in recent weeks against me and my family is that we’re going to win the governorship of Nuevo León,” he wrote on Twitter.
The MC candidate also said he is willing to collaborate with authorities because “I have nothing to hide – there is no irregularity in my campaign and even less so in my personal and professional life.”
PRI national president Alejandro Moreno claimed that the FGR’s announcement of its investigation into de la Garza is designed as a distraction from last week’s train crash on the Mexico City Metro system that claimed the lives of 26 people.
The Citizens Movement party’s national leader, Clemente Castañeda, called on López Obrador to “keep his hands off the electoral process.”
The governorship of Nuevo León – currently held by Jaime Rodríguez, a 2018 presidential candidate widely known as “El Bronco” – is seen as one of the biggest prizes on offer at the June 6 elections, at which governors will also be elected in 14 other states and the entire lower house of federal Congress will be renewed.
At his regular news conference on Tuesday, López Obrador – Morena’s founder – expressed support for the FGR’s decision to investigate the two candidates in Nuevo León, asserting that “we cannot be accomplices of fraud.”
“… Yesterday the spokespeople of conservatism were throwing their hands up in horror because the Attorney General’s Office opened an investigation against the Nuevo León candidates; I support that decision, I denounced [de la Garza] here, because [buying votes] is an electoral crime,” he said.
A trailer load of gifts for moms in Tototlán, Jalisco.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) delivered Mother’s Day gifts to communities in Guanajuato, Jalisco and Michoacán on Monday in the name of leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.”
Cartel members arrived in communities in pickup trucks with banners declaring “Mr. Mencho and the CJNG wish all mothers a happy day” with a photo of the gang leader alongside.
With their faces covered, CJNG members handed out household appliances like blenders, microwaves, stoves and irons, according to videos and images on social media.
Some of the women recipients stayed in the area to show their appreciation and pose for the camera, while others headed home to put their new appliances to use.
“Here, Mr. Mencho, the Lord of the Roosters, sends you a gift so that today on Mother’s Day you can have some happiness … We are the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, to make your day a little more special … This gift is not on the part of any political party, it is sent by Mr. Mencho,” announced recordings from the vehicles as a song by the band Los Tucanes de Tijuana, which pays homage to Oseguera, played in the background.
The cartel boss is referred to as Lord of the Roosters due to a fondness for cockfights.
Gerardo Rodríguez Sánchez Lara, professor of national security at the University of the Americas, Puebla, said the CJNG’s aim is strategic rather than charitable. “They want social support to create a social shield,” he said.
It’s not the first time that the CJNG has displayed this kind of gesture.
In December last year a video from Jalisco circulated on social media of people thanking “El Mencho” for toys they had received.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic photos on social media showed CJNG members handing out food packages.
The Gulf Cartel and the Zetas cartel have also given out gifts as a way to win public support.
Aureliana says she’s been offered money for her 7-year-old daughter, but she herself married voluntarily and wants her daughter to get an education.
Girls as young as nine are being sold into marriage for as little as 40,000 pesos (US $2,005) in Guerrero’s poverty-stricken Montaña region.
Young girls are being sold to their future husbands for 40,000 to 200,000 pesos (US $10,030), according to a report by the newspaper Reforma, which described the sale of child brides as a form of 21st-century slavery.
Part of the payment is sometimes made with cattle or even beer, Reforma said. The sale of young girls for marriage is a traditional practice in parts of Guerrero, especially in indigenous communities such as those found in the Mixtec municipality of Metlatónoc.
“It’s an old practice that we can’t eradicate even though the law says that the practice is a crime, human trafficking, specifically,” Serafín Nava Ortiz, a Metlatónoc lawyer and advisor to the municipal trustee, said in 2017.
The police chief in the town of Yuvi’nani said in an interview with the newspaper El Universal the same year that he had bought young wives for his sons, including a 14-year-old girl for whom he paid 110,000 pesos.
Children at a Yo quiero Yo puedo class meant to change attitudes. The organization estimates that 300,000 child brides have been sold in Guerrero.
Asked where he got the money from, Melitón Hernández explained that he did pretty well as a migrant in the United States: “I brought about 300,000 pesos from there.”
He also joked that he had bought his own wife, saying flippantly that he paid “50 pesos about 55 years ago.”
According to Martha Givaudan, head of Yo quiero Yo puedo (I want I can), a nongovernmental organization that works with disadvantaged communities, an estimated 300,000 girls have been sold into marriage in Guerrero over the years.
However, she acknowledged that there are no exact figures because most sales of child brides and subsequent marriages are not reported to authorities. State and municipal governments in Guerrero are well aware of the practice but have done little to stop it.
Reforma spoke to several indigenous women who recounted their own experiences of being sold as brides when they were still girls or adolescents.
“They put a price on you and they sell you without asking, without telling you,” said a woman identified only as Julia who was sold by her grandfather when she was 13. “You don’t have the option to say no,” she said.
Maurilia and Virginio, front, didn’t sell their daughter Catalina in marriage. Their sons paid for their wives but say they won’t sell their daughters.
Julia, who left her husband after suffering beatings for years, said she received no help from authorities when she was trapped in an abusive marriage at a young age. She added that other child brides have experienced similar situations.
“Nobody in the town helped us, not the municipality, not the state government, not the federal government,” Julia said.
“[The traditional form of government known as] usos y costumbres supposedly protects [people], but in reality it allows the abuse of girls and women,” she said.
Mariana, who was also sold as a child bride, told Reforma that “a lot of girls are suffering.”
“Social programs don’t reach our towns and even less so to help women,” she said.
“… Why do the authorities allow the sale of girls to continue as though they were animals, seeking protection in the usos y costumbres?” Mariana said. “Drugs come in [to our towns] but not basic human rights.”
Josefina, 74, was sold off for marriage at 15 by her father and had an unhappy life because of it. She decided not to repeat history with her own daughter, right.
Another woman sold as a child bride criticized soldiers for not helping young girls who have had their childhood cut short by being forced to become wives and being put to work or to raise children.
“The soldiers that arrive in town, why don’t they defend us? On the contrary, they take advantage of us as well and do us harm,” Ana said.
Givaudan, the NGO chief, said girls are often forced to work by their buyers to pay off the “debt” they incurred.
“It might be that a man decides to buy a girl [for himself] or purchases one for his son,” she said.
“… In addition to the sexual exploitation that implies, … the girl goes to work in the home, making tortillas, making the food; she has to go out to plant crops and have children,” Givaudan said. “The whole traditional role [of a wife] is being imposed on girls when they should be in school.”
She also said that girls lives are also placed at risk because they often become pregnant before their bodies are ready.
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Some become pregnant just when they’re reaching puberty, Givaudan said. “… It puts the lives of girls at risk, … they become mothers too early.”
Guerrero ranks second in the country for teenage pregnancies, Reforma said, adding that two of 10 births in the southern state are to mothers aged 19 or younger.
“It’s not just a problem of gender,” Givaudan said, referring to the engrained practice of selling young girls as wives. “It’s also one of rights, poverty and health.”
While families across the country celebrated Mother’s Day Monday, mothers of missing children marched in cities around the country to demand justice.
Carrying signs reading “Because they were taken from us alive, we want them back alive” and “Son, listen, your mother is in the battle,” women from at least 74 collectives walked in Mexico City from the Angel of Independence to the Monument to the Revolution, for the 10th annual March for National Dignity.
In front of the National Palace they were attended by Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, and Deputy Minister of Human Rights Alejandro Encinas.
Mothers showed photographs of their disappeared children, many wearing t-shirts bearing images of their faces. At the Glorieta de la Palma intersection some read out the names of the missing.
“… mothers searching for their family members cannot celebrate this May 10, there won’t be any hugs, laughs or gifts,” one woman said.
“Today I’m here, not celebrating my May 10, I’m telling the president of the republic that I want my son back alive,” said María Guadalupe Rodríguez Narciso, mother of Josué Molina Rodríguez, who disappeared in 2014 in Chilpancingo, Guerrero.
Ana Luisa Romo Díaz, whose son disappeared in Torreón, Coahuila, in 2010, criticized President López Obrador for inaction. “The president needs to stop the nonsense and, as he promised” put the government to work searching for the missing, adding that he has turned his back on families of the missing since he took office.
Sonia Hernández Camacho’s son disappeared nine months ago in Veracruz after he went with his partner to Mexico City to sell a vehicle. Although his partner was released to recount what happened she claimed that neither federal nor state authorities have attempted to search for her son.
“We gave a lot of evidence for them to search for him alive after his partner came and gave all the necessary information for his immediate search, and they didn’t do it,” she said.
