In Mexican elections, candidates fight to search for the missing | Andrés Manuel López Obrador News

Mexico City, Mexico – Mother’s Day on Friday was a somber occasion for Joanna Alvear of Toluca, Mexico.

She began the day with hundreds of other women in the shadow of the imposing Monument to the Mother, a stone obelisk in the center of Mexico City.

Most of the women wore the same grim expression: furrowed brows, clenched jaws, and piercing eyes, some filled with tears. Like many of them, Alvear held a homemade poster to his chest, whose cheery yellow color belied its heartbreaking appeal: “I’m still looking for you. Lilith, I love you.

She represents one of the approximately 111,000 people missing in Mexico today.

Every year, on Mother’s Day, the families of the “disappeared” join activists and concerned citizens to march through the streets of the capital, demanding answers in the tens of thousands of unsolved cases.

This year’s protest, however, had special significance. This comes ahead of crucial national elections on June 2, when every seat in Mexico’s Congress will be up for grabs, as will the presidency.

But as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term comes to an end, some question whether his administration has done enough to address widespread disappearances — and whether his successor can improve his record.

Family members like Alvear said they had to lead their own searches, relying on personal resources in the absence of government support.

In Alvear’s case, her daughter Lilith Saori Arreola Alvear, a 21-year-old transgender woman, disappeared while on vacation with friends in Playa Zicatela, Oaxaca, on January 2, 2023.

Months passed and, in desperation, Alvear read Mexico’s Standard Protocol for Searching for Missing Persons to better understand the investigation. That’s when she began to notice the deficiencies in the way her daughter’s case was being handled.

“When I read the approved protocol for searching for missing people, I realized that, in reality, the protocols that should be done were not done,” said Alvear.

“So, I am a mother who reached out to Lilith with her own resources.”

A President’s Promise

López Obrador was elected six years ago, in July 2018, after campaigning on a promise to seek justice for missing people.

One of the most pressing issues of this election cycle was the case of the Ayotzinapa 43, the mass disappearance four years earlier of 43 students from a rural teachers’ college.

The case dropped then-President Enrique Pena Nieto’s popularity to new lows as his government oversaw a flawed investigation fraught with alleged cover-ups, inconsistencies and accusations of torture and forced confessions.

But López Obrador promised justice for the Ayotzinapa 43 and other victims — and transparency in any future investigations.

“We are going to find out where these young people are and punish those responsible,” he said in 2018, alongside the students’ families.

López Obrador ended up winning in a historic landslide: his election marked a devastating defeat for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), achieving one of the largest margins of victory in decades.

Once in office, the leftist leader sought to fulfill his campaign promises. Just two days after taking office, López Obrador announced the creation of a truth commission dedicated to investigating the Ayotzinapa 43.

A legacy in question

But since then, feelings have soured among the families of the missing. Justice remains elusive and some have accused López Obrador of focusing more on improving his own image than on producing substantial results.

Under López Obrador’s leadership, the number of disappearances also continued to increase, surpassing 100,000 in 2022.

An esteemed 111,540 People were registered as “missing” from January 1962 to September 2023, according to the United Nations, citing Mexico’s own statistics. The vast majority of cases, however, were registered after 2006, a fact often blamed on Mexico’s “war on drugs”.

But critics say López Obrador tried to cast doubt on these statistics by carrying out a new government census to uncover “false” disappearances.

In December, the new census was only able to confirm 12,377 cases – a number that families and advocates say does not represent the true scale of the problem.

“The numbers are smaller, because he [the president] says there are fewer. Where are our children?” asked Nora Torres, who participated in the Mother’s Day march as part of the group Buscando Nuestros Desaparecidos en Tamaulipas, which searches for missing people.

“The majority of our relatives do not appear in the register. Where are they? We want them to tell us where they are.”

Human rights group Amnesty International also highlighted that the new census categorized 80,000 people “ambiguously” to arrive at the new lower total. He called on the Mexican government “to ensure transparency” and involve families of the missing in any new census processes.

Later, in mid-March, Interior Minister Luisa Maria Alcalde said that there are officially 99,729 people missing.

But the government framed the reaction as part of a smear campaign by the opposition and tensions have been rising.

In February, a group protesting the lack of progress in the Ayotzinapa case used a van to break down the door of the presidential palace. Then, on Monday, protesters threw fireworks at the palace after eight soldiers accused of involvement in the students’ disappearance were released from pre-trial detention. Twenty-six police officers were injured.

For his part, López Obrador accused reporters and volunteer investigators last week of suffering from “a delusion of necrophilia” in their search for the missing and presumed dead.

New elections, new promises

Many of the women attending this year’s Mother’s Day march expressed skepticism that the situation would change under a new administration.

“We don’t believe in anything. They are pure promises – pure promises for us mothers,” said Torres, who traveled from Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, in northern Mexico, to participate.

Presidents in Mexico are limited to one six-year term at a time. This means that López Obrador cannot run for a second consecutive term as president.

Thus, his protégé, the former mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, came forward to represent his party, Morena.

Polls show she maintains a healthy lead over Xochitl Galvez, a senator running on behalf of the conservative National Action Party.

Both candidates tried to address public concern about the disappearances — as well as systemic issues like government corruption used to cover up crimes.

“We must address the causes. We must reduce the crime of disappearance and we must serve the victims,” Sheinbaum said on March 19, during a press conference in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

Both she and Gálvez have campaigned to improve public safety as part of the solution.

Sheinbaum focused primarily on combating poverty as a way to reduce crime. But Gálvez took a tougher approach, promising to build a maximum security prison and use “the necessary bullets” to subdue criminal networks.

On Mother’s Day, Galvez met with the mothers of the missing in the northeastern city of Ciudad Victoria to discuss their concerns.

“There are women who today have nothing to celebrate,” she said at the campaign stop. “There are women who suffer from the absence of children.”

But critics point out that Gálvez’s political coalition, Força e Coração, includes the PRI – the same party that faced criticism for its mishandling of the Ayotzinapa case before López Obrador’s term.

Families push for ’empathy’

Many families called on this year’s candidates to restore the government agencies that were once tasked with searching for their missing loved ones.

In the last year, for example, the National Search Commission saw its staff reduced by half. The National Center for Human Identification (CNIH), in turn, was dismantled after less than two years of existence.

The center was tasked with examining the estimate 52,000 unidentified bodies discovered in Mexico since 2006.

But many family members of the missing told Al Jazeera they care little about which candidate takes power – as long as steps are taken to find their loved ones.

“We are neither with one party nor with another. The only thing we want is for whoever is going to be in government to actually do something for us,” said Lourdes Romero Diaz, whose brother-in-law disappeared in Mexico City in 2019 along with two co-workers.

Romero explained that the process of filing police reports can be traumatizing for the families involved – and the stalled and confusing nature of investigations can increase the stress they feel.

“It’s quite tiring,” Romero said. “The worst thing is that our president and our leaders close their eyes and say that nothing is happening here, both in Mexico City and in the country.”

But when politicians pay attention to cases like hers, Romero added that he sometimes questions their motives. She expressed concern that politicians could use disappearances – and the outrage they spark – to gain public favor.

“We do not agree with our relatives being used as political loot. They are not an object that they can use to monetize or use in their policies,” she said.

Another mother at Friday’s march, Ana Maria Velazquez, told Al Jazeera that her son Carlos Eduardo Monroy Velazquez, 20, disappeared two years ago while trying to cross the border into the United States.

She hopes this year’s candidates deliver what she and other family members want: understanding — and answers.

“I wish they had more empathy because the truth is we didn’t have any support,” she said. “The state didn’t give us any answers.”