La búsqueda de los migrantes chiapanecos desaparecidos

·20 min·1 clip

Verónica describes calling her children repeatedly, only to get voicemail as they disappeared at a Walmart cinema.

This episode follows Verónica Guillén Trujillo and Patricia del Carmen Méndez, two mothers searching for their three missing adult children in Mexico. The hosts are journalists from "Así Como Suena," a platform focused on memory and human rights in stories of disappearance. Verónica migrated from Chiapas to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in 2006 to escape domestic violence and seek better work. Her children, Carlos Alfredo Ruiz Guillén and Karina Carmen Ruiz Guillén, along with her son-in-law Juan Francisco Tomás Méndez, disappeared after visiting a Cinépolis movie theater inside a Walmart on April 16, 2019. Their nine-year-old daughter was found days later at a DIF family services office. Verónica, fearing for her safety, immediately drove her granddaughter over 1,700 kilometers back to Chiapas. Both mothers initially hesitated to file an official report, worried it might endanger their children, but a later extortion attempt demanding money for their return pushed them to act. They connected with the civil association Voces Mesoamericanas and joined the collective Junashco Tantik, a group of about forty Chiapas families searching for missing migrants. Filing a formal report three months later, they faced jurisdictional hurdles as the investigation was transferred to Tamaulipas, over 1,500 kilometers away. The mothers describe constant pressure on authorities as necessary to keep the case active, noting everything stalls if they stop asking. They built alliances with search collectives in Tamaulipas through national meetings like the Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos. The episode details the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team's "Proyecto Frontera," which cross-references DNA from migrant remains in U.S. morgues with samples from searching families. By December 2022, this project had identified 289 migrants. The collective demands that Mexico's Executive Commission for Victim Assistance handle repatriation and provide financial support for victims' children and travel expenses for families. A key insight is the lack of a specific mechanism to search for Mexican migrants who disappear internally or abroad, despite a general protocol for missing persons. Verónica found a new partner in Chiapas and runs a water purification business while caring for her now-teenage granddaughter. She and Patricia made a pact to continue the search for all three children if one of them is no longer able. The episode frames their story within a global context of families searching for missing migrants, from Africa to Central America. The tone is intimate and narrative, weaving personal testimony with factual reporting on systemic failures. The style is empathetic and educational, highlighting the logistical and emotional challenges faced by searching families. This episode would deeply resonate with listeners interested in human rights, migration stories, and grassroots social movements in Latin America. Those seeking purely analytical policy discussions or fast-paced investigative journalism might find its pace too reflective.

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