CIVICUS speaks about efforts to make use of the 2026 FIFA World Cup to focus on Mexico’s enforced disappearance disaster with Ana Enamorado, a Honduran nationwide who continues to seek for her lacking son in Mexico, and founding father of the Regional Community of Migrant Households.
Enforced disappearances in Mexico hit migrant households significantly arduous, as their precarious immigration standing compounds the shortage of state assist. Households and search teams are profiting from the truth that worldwide consideration is at the moment centered on the World Cup being performed in Mexico to boost consciousness of this disaster and demand that the Mexican authorities seek for and discover the disappeared.
How did your son Óscar go lacking, and what’s recognized about his case?
My son Óscar was 19 when he went lacking. He left Honduras in 2008, fleeing the violence, and was within the USA when some younger males invited him to Mexico with the promise of a job, a very good wage, an training and the possibility to see me once more. It was all a deception.
These had been the years of the struggle on medicine that President Felipe Calderón declared in 2006, when the cartels started forcibly recruiting younger folks to hitch their ranks. Óscar was taken to El Carrizo, within the municipality of San Sebastián del Oeste, Jalisco state. It’s an remoted place with no public transport and extreme deprivation, which makes it very troublesome to flee. I final spoke to him on 19 January 2010, and I haven’t heard his voice since.
Little is understood about his case, and the little that’s recognized is marred by negligence. In December 2009, weeks earlier than his final name, charred our bodies had been present in the identical place, however the investigation led nowhere. In 2013, forensic authorities in Jalisco tried at hand over some ashes to me with none DNA proof to verify they had been my son’s. The forensic institute went as far as to cremate round 1,560 unidentified our bodies in lower than a decade, a apply that has left so many households with no method of understanding the reality.
The Mexican state solely started trying to find Óscar in 2020, 10 years after I reported him lacking. To today, I’m nonetheless trying to find him and demanding justice.
What obstacles do migrant households face when trying to find lacking family members?
A serious impediment is the indifference of the authorities within the nation of origin, which in my case is Honduras. We households are left on our personal, with nobody to information us. The consulate needs to be the primary authority to help us, and it ought to achieve this shortly, as a result of the primary few hours are essential for locating an individual alive. However it not often does so. Because of this, submitting a lacking individual report and a proper grievance turns into nearly inconceivable. And with out that, it’s not doable to open an investigation file or entry our rights.
Added to that is my immigration standing. Though I’ve been dwelling in Mexico for 14 years, I’m nonetheless thought-about a ‘customer on humanitarian grounds’ and, to retain this standing, I’ve to show yearly that my son remains to be lacking. Having to show my tragedy time and time once more simply to have the ability to keep revictimises me. That’s why I initiated authorized proceedings towards the Nationwide Institute of Migration to alter my standing to that of a everlasting resident. Nonetheless, it continues to reject my software, leaving me in a precarious state of affairs in the case of accessing my fundamental rights.
Why did you resolve to protest through the World Cup?
We took to the streets of the host cities to point out the opposite facet of Mexico: the corruption, violence, impunity and the state’s indifference in direction of the 1000’s of lacking folks. Though the Mexican state could want to challenge a picture of celebration and modernity via the World Cup, there may be no World Cup celebrations towards the backdrop of the humanitarian disaster attributable to disappearances.
In Mexico, there are over 135,000 lacking folks. To place this into perspective, that quantity is one and a half occasions the capability of the Azteca Stadium, the place a number of matches on this World Cup have been performed, together with the opening match. Added to it is a forensic disaster. There are over 75,000 unidentified our bodies. That’s 75,000 individuals who didn’t return house and whose households proceed inquiring about their whereabouts.
And the quantity retains rising. We estimate that, because the World Cup started on 11 June, over 1,200 additional folks have gone lacking. On 30 June, three youngsters aged 14 and 15 disappeared in Guadalajara, one of many host cities, in broad daylight amid streets stuffed with celebrating crowds. The authorities consider it might have been a case of recruitment by organised crime. This apply continues unabated, and the federal government exhibits no signal of desirous to cease it or of trying to find the lacking folks, significantly when they’re migrants.
How has the Mexican authorities responded to the protests?
The state is uncomfortable with us taking to the streets to protest as a result of each time we do, we expose the cruel and painful actuality it needs to cover. That’s why, as an alternative of listening to us and trying to find our family members, it has responded with criminalisation, mockery and repression.
At her morning press convention on the day of the World Cup opening ceremony, President Claudia Sheinbaum performed down our demonstration, and the Secretary of the Inside insinuated that somebody was paying us to take to the streets, asserting an investigation into how we’re funded. It’s an accusation that’s as painful because it’s outrageous. We now have at all times looked for our family members utilizing our personal sources.
Then got here the repression. Riot police cordoned us off and encircled us to forestall us from reaching the stadiums. On 30 June, on Calzada de Tlalpan, certainly one of Mexico Metropolis’s major avenues, they assaulted and detained members of the ‘Hasta Encontrarte’ (Till we discover you) collective merely for carrying photographs bearing the faces of their family members. Bodily violence provides to the emotional and psychological trauma we already bear. In the meantime, federal and state forces had been deployed to make sure the protection of vacationers, an effort they’ve by no means made to seek for our family members.
What are you demanding of the federal government and worldwide our bodies?
We demand, initially, that the Mexican state make the seek for lacking folks an actual precedence. We name on President Sheinbaum to satisfy with the households and collectives in individual to succeed in real agreements on search, location and prevention. We wish to understand how many individuals have been discovered alive, to have correct investigations carried out and to have educated and empathetic employees who can present us with actual solutions.
However this disaster extends past Mexico’s borders, and the response should do the identical. The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights have provided their help. We name on the federal government to just accept it. Such cooperation is pressing, as a result of there are tens of 1000’s of individuals of different nationalities who’ve gone lacking in Mexico, and trying to find them requires the activation of worldwide mechanisms. Many are ladies who’ve been trafficked, and most are taken overseas, so discovering them relies on governments working collectively.
Lastly, we name on the worldwide neighborhood to not flip a blind eye to what’s occurring, and on the media to assist us amplify our calls for, so our voices attain the world simply as World Cup targets do.
We received’t relaxation till we discover them. They had been taken alive, and we wish them again alive.
CIVICUS interviews a variety of civil society activists, specialists and leaders to collect various views on civil society motion and present points for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and don’t essentially replicate these of CIVICUS. Publication doesn’t indicate endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they signify.
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