Mexican mothers demand justice for almost 100,000 missing people

Mexico City, May 10 (EFE).- Thousands of women walked Tuesday in Mexico City, where Mother’s Day is celebrated on this date, to demand that Mexican authorities expand efforts to search for and prevent disappearances, at a time when the country approaches 100,000 people gone missing.

“May 10 is a very important day for us, we have nothing to celebrate, it’s a day to demand,” Mirna Medina Quinones, founder of the group Las Rastreadores de El Fuerte and protagonist of the documentary “Te nombre en silencio,” which premieres Thursday in Mexico.

Like her, thousands of mothers shouted their children’s names and recalled that in Mexico the scourge of disappearances turns, for many women in the country, a day of celebration deeply rooted in Mexico into an exhausting day of protest.

“I am here to call the country so that they do not forget the disappearances, we are here making a presence so that the government also listens, we are here for our children, brothers, sisters, parents,” said Adriana Moreno, whose son disappeared in 2009 in the city of Francisco I. Madero, in Coahuila state.

The march was held like every year in Mexico City with demands to advance in the investigations to find the missing people, in addition to handing over more than tens of thousands of bodies that had already been found to their families. Above all, they asked to carry out prevention tasks and end impunity, which exceeds 95 percent according to official data.

The same claims were made in mass demonstrations and rallies in cities in other states of the country such as Monterrey and Ciudad Juarez.

The demonstration began at 10:00 a.m. local time (3:00 p.m. GMT) in the central Monumento a la Madre.

The contingents of multiple organizations from all over the country advanced along the Paseo de la Reforma until they reached the central roundabout of the Angel de la Independencia, where they issued a joint statement. Later, representatives of groups and mothers would take the microphone and make their own claims.

“On this day we have resignified being a mother,” read the representatives of the Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico during the demonstration.

This morning, several representatives went to the doors of the National Palace, where Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lives and does his morning press conferences.

Although they arrived at 6:30 local time (11:30 GMT), half an hour before the start of the conference, and requested “five minutes” to speak with the president and deliver a document, this was not granted.

“Many congratulations to all, to those who are suffering for their children, for their disappeared, to those who are sick or are worried about their sick relatives, the humble women, poor from all communities, towns, working women, all women, all mothers,” Lopez Obrador later said during the press conference.

The mothers said they recognized the efforts of the authorities, whom, they added, have seen more involved in recent years but only “in the discourse.” EFE

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