On May 10, Mexico's Day of the Mother, thousands of mothers and other family members of the disappeared held a March for National Dignity in the capital, calling for action on their missing loved ones. The march, which filled the main avenues of Mexico City, was organized by a coalition made up of 60 regional collectives of survivors of the disappeared from around the country. In the days before the march, a group camped out outside the National Palace, demanding a dialogue on the matter with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Last month, the disappearance of Debanhi Escobar, an 18-year-old law student, sparked fresh outrage amid a spate of disappearances of women in Monterrey, capital of northern Nuevo León state. Her body was found two weeks later submerged in a cistern on the grounds of a motel near where she was last seen alive, according to authorities. Hundreds of women blocked a highway in downtown Monterrey in the days following, demanding an end to gender violence. Twenty-six women and girls have disappeared in Nuevo León this year, and five more have been found dead after being reported missing.
The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances last month urged [16] Mexico to address "the alarming trend of rising enforced disappearances," saying the problem is facilitated by "almost absolute impunity." (Al Jazeera [17], El Financiero [18], El Pais [19])
Attacks on journalists continue
Just as Mexican media workers prepared to protest the killing of a journalist last week, word came May 9 that two more were shot to death in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz. The killings of Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera, both of the online news site El Veraz [20] in Cosoleacaque, brought to 11 the number of journalist slayings [21] in the country this year. Veracruz state authorities say they are investigating.
Their killings followed the ninth slaying of journalist this year, in the northern state of Sinaloa. Prosecutors there said May 5 that the body of Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos was found on a dirt road near a junkyard in the state capital, Culiacán. Ramírez Ramos, of local news site Fuentes Fidedignas [22], had been abducted near his home hours earlier. (AP [23])
See our last report on the human rights crisis [24] in Mexico.
