Mexico Confronts 40 Years of Disappearances
Also in this edition: Music from Oaxaca’s Costa Chica. Fewer homicides in Mexico than in any year since 2016. A global inequality emergency. Cuba, portraits of resistance.
Lea La Jornada Internacional en español aquí.
Mothers Searching for Their Loved Ones
Carrying signs bearing the word “DISAPPEARED,” thousands of women searching for missing relatives marched on Mother’s Day in Mexico City and seven other states. In the capital, participants in the 14th National Dignity March of Mothers Searching for Their Children declared that in a country with more than 133,000 disappeared persons, including “our sons and daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, we raise our voices and continue to say that, as mothers, today we have nothing to celebrate.” At every rally, they demanded greater support from authorities to speed up search efforts and investigations.
For decades, Mexico has endured a severe crisis of disappearances that continues to this day. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), these crimes are now committed by organized crime groups operating “in close collusion with government agents.” President Claudia Sheinbaum has insisted on treating disappearances as a national priority, and her government describes the issue as a humanitarian crisis. This week, Interior Ministry Human Rights Undersecretary Arturo Medina acknowledged the pain, courage, and legitimate demands of victims’ families.
The IACHR report on disappearances in Mexico, presented this week, concluded that Mexico faces “a serious crisis” involving both disappearances and the identification of bodies held in state custody. The report stated that disappearances are “widespread” and affect a broad range of victims, including children and young people recruited by organized crime, migrants, and women and girls subjected to gender violence, particularly trafficking for sexual exploitation or forced labor. It also identified journalists, mothers searching for missing relatives, and human rights defenders among the victims.
Furthermore, IACHR rapporteur for Mexico Andrea Pochak emphasized that disappearances continue because of “high levels of impunity” and because organized crime operates “in close collusion with government agents,” who may be involved at different levels, ranging from handing people over to criminal groups to participating in killings.
She noted that, according to the National Registry of Disappeared Persons, as of February 2026 there were more than 128,000 reported cases. Independent estimates, she added, suggest that the number of unidentified bodies exceeds 70,000.
The federal government stated that its participation in preparing the IACHR report “constitutes an important step demonstrating its commitment to cooperation and strengthening the multilateral system.” In fact, Undersecretary Medina said many of the 40 recommendations issued by the IACHR are already part of the strategy being pursued by the Mexican government.
However, representatives of collectives of victims’ families questioned the Commission about how it would monitor implementation of its 40 recommendations. “Once there is an idea of how to work on this, dialogue with the victims has to begin so we can see how to bring it down to the states,” said Grace Fernández, who has been searching for her brother Dan Jeremeel, disappeared in Torreón, Coahuila, in 2008.
The Mexican government has criticized some recent reports by international organizations which, in its view, fail to recognize progress made in recent years within a crisis resulting from decades of negligence—or even official tolerance of torture and disappearances—by previous governments. In early May, federal authorities rejected a report by the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances because it extrapolated to 2025 figures from an analysis covering 2009 to 2016. But one week later, President Claudia Sheinbaum and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk agreed on avenues of cooperation to address the long-running crisis and its consequences.
Some representatives of collectives of victims’ families say they do not see enough progress and criticize the Mexican state for failing to address the disappearance crisis effectively or stop the murders of the activists who are searching for their loved ones, especially women. “If organized crime doesn’t kill us, depression and illness will,” said Bibiana Mendoza of the collective Hasta Encontrarte.
The Quote:
“It is now or never. That is why right now, every act of art is an act of resistance. Right now, every truth spoken is a beacon of light in the gathering darkness. And right now, let every freedom song be a trumpet of hope to the heroes among you who will stand up and undo this madness.”
—Tom Morello, in an act of solidarity with migrants in New York.
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Music from Oaxaca’s Costa Chica. The documentary Los hijos de la costa portrays musicians from five communities in the Costa Chica region of Oaxaca and Guerrero, showcasing different perspectives and approaches to Afro-Mexican culture. It covers musical genres such as charanga, merequetengue, cumbia, chilena, son, and coastal bolero, all of which shape the sound and identity of the region. The film will soon be available on digital platforms. Trailer.
◻️ Fewer homicides in Mexico than in any year since 2016. Between September 2024 and this past April, the country recorded a 40 percent decrease in the daily average of intentional homicides. According to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, the first four months of the year saw the lowest incidence of that crime since 2016.
◻️ There is a global inequality emergency, warns Jayati Ghosh, co-chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. So far this century, four out of every ten dollars generated worldwide have gone to the wealthiest one percent, while the poorest half of the population received only one percent of those resources. “There is only one way to reverse this extreme concentration: end legalized tax evasion across the planet,” La Jornada wrote.
◻️ Cuba, estampas de la resistencia is the new book depicting the resilience of the Cuban people in the face of what it describes as U.S. criminal harassment, through the reporting of Luis Hernández Navarro and photographer Jair Cabrera Torres of La Jornada.
◻️ One-third of the Mexican population lacks safe drinking water. Computer engineering students at UNAM won first place in HackODS UNAM 2026 with a study on water access in 2,469 municipalities across Mexico. They found that 36 percent of the Mexican population lacks access to safe drinking water, and in some municipalities more than 80 percent of residents do not have access to potable water.
◻️ The tragedy of Trump’s mistakes: Stiglitz. “As an economist, I am frequently asked what implications the war Trump has chosen to wage against Iran will have for the economies of the United States and the world,” writes the Nobel Prize-winning economist and former chief economist of the World Bank. “Not only has the supply of oil and gas been threatened. Unlike the oil embargoes of the 1970s, fertilizer production, on which global food systems depend, has also been jeopardized.”
◻️ Albanese: people have been ordered to look away. “People are still dying in Gaza, and in the West Bank as well. There is no ceasefire. People have been ordered to look away from the Gaza Strip, to forget,” declared Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Albanese stressed the need for a commercial break with Israel and, on an individual level, for people to avoid any dealings with companies profiting from the genocide.
◻️ Ojarasca: recognizing victories. In a national and continental climate of deep unease for Indigenous peoples, migrants, and working classes, Mexico still has some successful struggles, even simply because they have endured for one, two, or three decades, states La Jornada’s monthly supplement on the Indigenous world. Among these victories, it cites the EZLN’s 32-year struggle in Chiapas, the 15 years of territorial autonomy in Cherán, and 25 years of resistance in San Salvador Atenco.
If you have any suggestions about the newsletter, please respond to this email and let us know.
The subscription is free.
Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Alvarez. More information.