Their hands are like flowers. With them, they cradled their son; they mothered their daughter. But lately, they have been joining forces with other hands, helping each other. They pass each other a bottle of water, a tissue, the megaphone, the shovel to dig up the earth and, in the best of cases, find a piece of clothing that was very familiar to them, because they washed it many times, because it had been a birthday present… Sometimes what comes out is a piece of bone as broken as their own heart.
Many searching mothers gathered today, March 8, to walk and shout from the rooftops the names of those who came from their wombs, so that somehow Jeshua, Brian, Renata, Julio, Giovanni, Carlos, Ricardo, Luis Alberto, Yesenia, Jorge Alberto, Brenda—the list is endless— know that their mothers are looking for them, that their families are fighting to find them, that they have no rest and will not stop until they find them.
In Mexico, there are more than 131,000 missing persons, and the number is growing every day. However, during the week, President Claudia Sheimbaum asserted that women in Mexico no longer cry. Could it be that, like Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who neither saw nor heard his opponents, she does not either?
The searching mothers cry, protest, demand justice, look for their children, do the work that the state should be doing, are threatened, and some have been murdered, like Rubí Patricia Gómez. Their contingent was supposed to be the first, to lead the march on March 8. However, other contingents took the lead, as if to break ground and warm up the atmosphere.
“Sir, madam, don’t be indifferent: they are killing women in front of everyone,” they shout. But the female police officers watch the protesters pass by with total and absolute indifference. Today, as part of their uniform, they carry small white carnations in their hands and adorn their black visors with large purple bows that we will surely not see tomorrow or the day after.
Behind those first groups, almost on their heels, is the Mexico City cleaning crew, dressed in cherry red from head to toe, with fluorescent yellow vests and white bows on their brooms. They are efficient, it must be said. They sweep everything up: no piece of paper, flyer, or purple gas canister escapes them.
In addition to the “traditional” batucadas, a group of Mixes perform music from Oaxaca. Their hands play wind and percussion instruments. The Triquis wear their red huipils and long beaded necklaces. The Mazahuas almost disappear behind their blankets.
Several drones fly over Paseo de la Reforma and half the world takes photos and videos, but only Gerardo Magallón’s sensitivity captures the moment when a young woman walks very straight near the Monument to Women. She made her “wedding” dress out of search tokens. One of her friends brings her the microphone: “They call me La Llorona because I never stop looking for you. They ripped my life away and my body is this banner. Look at me: my skirt has no end, just as my mourning has no end. There are more than 130,000 who are absent today. Each face is a name, each name is a cry. Each thread of this veil is infinite pain. I was looking for my children and I found graveyards of pain.”
“Not one more, not one more, not one more missing person.”
The banner is an enlarged photo showing the search file of a serious-looking boy with a frank gaze. It describes Jeshua Cisneros Lechuga: thin, 1.72 meters tall, short black hair, dark brown eyes, aquiline nose. His mother, Carla Lechuga, describes him as he is: a good boy, a good son, a good brother, and adds: a very loving, sensitive, empathetic child.
She lost everything on November 13 last year, when Jeshua didn’t come home. Her mother’s heart knew something was wrong…
“I had come many times on this march because I sympathized with the searching mothers. I didn’t understand their pain, but I could imagine it. This is the first time I’ve been here as a searching mother—her words flow, her tears too. I’m going to keep fighting until I find him: that’s my promise as a mother. When he came to the marches, he would ask me, “Where are you going, mother?” And I would say, “To overthrow the patriarchy!” And he would reply, “That’s great, mother, but be careful.”
“And today I am here as a searching mother. I will not stop causing discomfort, shouting, demanding, because in this corrupt and violent country, violence affects us all. I am living proof of that. I always came here in support and solidarity, and now I come for my son. Young people do not disappear: they are taken away.”
“I don’t want to live in another country: I want to live in another Mexico.”
There are few references to the upcoming World Cup. But no more are needed. A large poster reads: “The World Cup in Mexico: where soccer is stained with pain and absence is visible in every stadium” and “It is a country so poor that it screams louder for a goal than for a femicide.”
If the cries are forceful, so is the language of the hands. Hands whose gestures are letters. Hands holding banners, hands drawing the mirror of Venus with purple makeup and a raised fist. The hands of a young woman holding a cardboard sign on which she wrote: “Paint me if when you spoke they didn’t believe you or made you doubt yourself.” Her face, her arms, her chest were covered in red, green, and purple paint, as if she were a landscape by the impressionist Claude Monet.
And while there is a promise to overthrow patriarchy and make all of Latin America feminist, there is an explanation: “It’s not hatred, it’s remembrance, for those who are missing.”
The Zócalo filled with girls of all ages, young women, adults, and grandmothers raising their hands and raising their voices. “We are not one, we are not a hundred, damn government, count us correctly.
Original text by Beatrice Zalce. Photos by Gerardo Magallón and Jaime Quintana. Published in Desinformémonos on March 8th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.