Thousands of women, known as searching mothers, have transformed the pain of the absence of their missing sons and daughters into an unwavering fight for the truth. Despite everything, every day they go out into the fields, with shovels, picks, and faith, to search for their loved ones in clandestine graves, vacant lots, and deserts.
Being a searching mother is not a chosen role, but one imposed by tragedy. In a country with more than 120,000 officially registered missing persons and tens of thousands of clandestine graves discovered, they have become researchers, human rights defenders, and guardians of memory. In Zacatecas alone, 3,800 disappearances are recorded.
Despite this situation, there are sectors of society that simply find these women’s struggle outrageous. A good example of this is the events of September 8th, when Zacatecas became the scene of a painful contradiction: while Governor David Monreal Ávila delivered his state of the state address, searching mothers in the streets tried to make visible a reality that official statistics seem to hide.
The Sangre de mi Sangre Collective, with red fabrics hanging from a pedestrian bridge, a symbol of the blood shed by thousands of disappeared people, was peacefully demonstrating. These women silently cried out the pain of a society demanding justice. The response they received was not dialogue or listening, but repression.
Personnel from the Immediate Reaction Force (FRIZ) of the State Public Security Secretariat and the Preventive Highway Police unleashed a series of attacks, shoving, and insults that revealed the authoritarian face of a state that, instead of accompanying the pain of its citizens, chooses to silence it. This repression comes just a few weeks after the body of searching mother Aida Karina Juárez Jacobo, who belonged to the collective Following Your Trail with Love Zacatecas, was found in the state of San Luis Potosí.
Mexico owes an enormous debt to the victims of disappearances and to those who tirelessly seek the truth. Honoring that debt means leaving repression behind and betting on truth, justice, and memory. Only in this way can we aspire to a country where pain is not repressed, but rather transformed into the strength necessary to build a different future. Being a searching mother means living in a permanent state of pain, uncertainty, and hope. It means waking up every day with the absence of your missing son or daughter and, at the same time, with the strength to continue searching.
Source: oem
