Content warning: Mentions of enforced disappearance, violence, and graphic descriptions of human remains.

Martha Leticia García Cruz, affectionately nicknamed Marlety by her son, César Ulises Quintero García, has been living in a nightmare, one shared by over 130,000 other Mexican families. 

This statement has been translated and then edited for clarity.

César left home on the 4th of August 2017 and I’m still waiting for him.

When he would normally come home, he’d turn off the garage light and yell, “I’m home, Mum!” And I’d say, “Okay, son, turn off the light and lock it up tight.”

That garage light is still on.

It’s still on because one day he’ll come home and turn off that garage light, and say, “I’m home Mum.”

For a long time, the government made people believe that this only happened to people who were involved in bad activities, but it has been proven that organised crime takes whoever they want. 

[Editor’s Note: Many of these disappearances form part of a methodical abduction circuit used to expand narco-controlled territory.]

Those taken are often people who are looking for work, looking for a way to support their families, to achieve their dreams […] they have to move to a different city, and often a different state. 

Unfortunately, they arrive in Jalisco and disappear. So, we ask society to read, to search, to investigate what is really happening.

[Editor’s Note: Marlety works for a search collective called Colectivo Entre Cielo y Tierra Oficial, one of many grassroots movements—predominantly made up of mothers—searching for their family members across Mexico. They work largely independently from authorities.] 

People have no idea how great the pain is, how great the fear is, the uncertainty of not knowing if they are still alive, thirsty, hungry, cold or if they are being mistreated.

The pain is so cruel that there are mothers who find their children dismembered and still thank God.

They still smile and say, “I found him, I found my son, I did it!”, and it leaves me speechless because no one ever wants to find their children in this situation. Here in Jalisco, they leave them dismembered, sometimes in as many as 22 parts.

When we do field searches, we can find bags with only heads, legs or hands.

We families are doing everything we can because the government isn’t doing what it should.

We have had to unite in groups to be heard, because when someone acts alone, they are discriminated against, they are revictimized, and they are not attended to by the authorities.

But it’s different when a whole group accompanies a new family that has fallen into this tragedy, and then authorities are forced to listen to us.

There are 16,000 missing persons in the state alone, according to official figures in Jalisco, and I can assure you that these figures fall far short.

Because throughout the interior of the state of Jalisco, in all the rural areas, where everyone knows each other, their young people are being taken. They are immediately threatened not to report it, because they are told that they have more children [that can be taken].

That’s how big the feeling of being invisible is, feeling afraid of who to turn to, because many times it’s our own authorities who are behind all of this that’s happening.

I’m not saying all of them, but there are many police officers working with these people.

So, these reports never come through. I can assure you that 16,000 could easily double.

Giving up is forbidden because for our children the only hope they have of being found is for their families to search for them, because we are alone in this.

We are their voices. We are their cries, the cries that no one hears. But we do listen to them from the soul.

We the mothers, were instilled with fear, but we grew wings.

We know that we are truly at risk every day because many of our companions, mothers searching for their missing loved ones, have been killed, and no one has given up the searches.

Our souls ache so much that it deteriorates our bodies.

Neither X-rays nor studies nor blood tests will show the damage to our souls.

One doctor told me, “Ma’am, we don’t know what you do for a living. But what you’re seeing […] it hurts you so much that your brain is telling your eyes to stop seeing it to protect all of your vital organs. It is affecting your heart, your pancreas and other vital organs. What are you seeing?”

And what did we see?

Going to the morgue and seeing the dismembered bodies, putting them together like a puzzle, being able to identify them by tattoos, by distinctive marks, conspicuous moles, birthmarks, some prosthesis, braces, by dental work.

I had to stop searching in mass graves in the field. Now my search is for the living. Our search collective, Colectivo Entre Cielo y Tierra Oficial, has searches to rescue those still alive.

Three years ago, we rescued three young people, thanks to a protest, because people dared to anonymously say where they had seen them, and the families mobilised.

What are we going to leave behind for the generations that are being born?

One day they’re going to ask us, “What did you do to stop this?”

So I want to be part of a solution for those children who I see happy, content—four years old, eight years old—and I see them so happy, and they don’t know that we’re in an asphalt jungle. A jungle where, if the lion doesn’t eat you, a snake will bite you.

I saw my son walk away, standing tall. My faith is in hugging him again.

So that everyone who hears your report can realise that they live well and we always have to take care of each other, we all have to do what we can to make this world a better place. It’s a beautiful world; it’s a wonderful world, but don’t forget that we live in a jungle.

Image Source:  Rodrigo Caballero, NO ESTÁN SOLAS, 2022.