Today, organizations, collectives, and civil society gathered in the Plaza de la Paz in the center of San Cristóbal de Las Casas to accompany the pain and dignity of the searching mothers and families from southern Mexico. Today, the epicenter of mourning is the state of Jalisco, more specifically the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlán. A place that breaks with the official narrative of transformation, progress, and change that different governments insist on promoting. It shows us the terror that thousands upon thousands of people have experienced and endured in many regions of the country. Once again, the credibility of the State is shattered, placing us at the center of the families of thousands of disappeared people who have no answers and are offered in exchange only paperwork, ephemeral dialogue, and constant authoritarian (now scientific) condemnation
In Teuchitlán, not only are clothes and human remains being found; what we are collectively discovering is the combination of criminal violence and the corruption of a system that covers up and protects the perpetrators. A system comprised of media outlets, political parties, and agencies that work day after day to hide, distort, and silence the voices of searching mothers. Who can operate an extermination and recruitment center without the support of state security? How can so many people be transported and disappeared without any reports being filed with prosecutors’ offices and government offices? Who protects whom?
From Chiapas, we condemn the attempt to channel the information being generated in recent hours and channel it into a corrupt political arena. The national debate must focus on the hearts of searching mothers; that’s where we must pay attention; that’s where we have a path and direction. Isn’t the political class ashamed of having to defend the indefensible? Is it important to clean up the image of the previous six-year term? Is it a priority?
The actions of the Jalisco Searching Warriors Collective and other collectives challenge all of us, all of us at the national level. It calls on us to denounce and articulate our own regional reflections. Why do governments and their agents rush to generate strategies in the midst of tragedy? Why didn’t they do it before, why not yesterday, why not six, ten, 20 years ago? The number of 122,000 missing persons grows daily, and national outrage along with it. It’s time to listen to the mothers and families and be moved by their stories. Anyone who wants to follow the path of true peace must listen attentively, with respect and admiration, to those who seek truth and justice.
From the Plaza de la Paz, we say that the disaster is also within Chiapas, that it is urgent to heed the calls of the searching families and collectively seek solutions to their demands. As long as the advertising campaigns of incoming politicians have more funding than the search teams and commissions in the region, the problem will continue to be fueled and deepened.
In Chiapas, we are no strangers to this phenomenon. In the final days of December 2024, the State Attorney General’s Office, the Secretariat of Public Security, and the State Search Commission reported the discovery of 25 clandestine graves in the municipalities of La Concordia and Palenque, Chiapas. Thirty-one bodies were found, 29 of them male and two female. These facts only serve to confirm the serious crisis of violence and disappearances that civil society organizations have repeatedly denounced. In February of this year, two clandestine graves were discovered on the Tapachula-Viva México highway, where scattered human remains and skulls were found.
In 2022, 839 missing persons were registered, 537 men and 302 women. In 2023, the total number of missing persons was 1,243, of which 785 were men and 458 were women. In 2024, 1,192 cases were officially recorded, of which 876 were men and 316 were women. Tapachula had the highest number of missing persons cases in 2024, followed by Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Comitán de Domínguez, Palenque, and San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
From January to March 2025, more than 83 search forms for children and adolescents were issued in Chiapas. Twenty-seven children and adolescents reported missing in the 2025 quarter have not been located, representing 33%.
According to the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons (RNPDNO), Chiapas has 1,516 missing persons as of today. 1,152 men and 364 women.
We ask ourselves, “Where are they?”
We stand in solidarity with the searching families of Chiapas and those throughout Mexico. May these candles illuminate with hope the long journey traveled by women and men in the search for their loved ones, and may these shoes mark the path to a future with dignity and memory, justice, and peace.
The undersigned organizations call on the people of Chiapas to:
• Denounce the violence affecting our state and the complicity of the authorities, using any means and space.
• Stand in solidarity with the families of missing persons and make their demands your own.
The disappearance of people affects us all.
Working Group Against Disappearances in Chiapas:
Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights, United Families of Chiapas Committee, Searching for Our Missing Migrants “Junax Ko’ntantik,” Melel Xojobal A.C., Services and Advice for Peace, A.C. (SERAPAZ), Mesoamerican Voices, Action with Migrant Peoples.
March 18th, 2025
Original article at Frayba, March 18th, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.