XALAPA, Mexico — At 5 a.m., the couple stirred to the buzz of a cellphone alarm. They had hardly slept — Carlos Saldaña had been in the hospital the night before, betrayed by his fragile stomach. He had prayed that the pain would subside, that God would give him strength. Today was the raid, the culmination of years of tracking the cartels, of lonely reconnaissance missions to find where they had discarded his daughter.
For so long, he had begged officials to do something, anything. Now, he wondered if he could even walk.
“Why tonight, God?” he had murmured in the hospital, doubled over. “I’ve been waiting so many years for this.”
He had spent the last six years searching for his daughter Karla, charging through every obstacle with an obsession that bordered on lunacy — cartel threats, government indifference, declining health, even his other children, who feared that his reckless hunt had put them in danger.
Vicky
Delgadillo watched as he eased out of bed and grabbed a cane. She had a
missing girl as well, Yunery, whom Mr. Saldaña now thought of as his
own. For the last two years, the couple had shared a home, a life and a
love born of loss.
She understood the raw fixation that defined his life. It defined hers too.
She understood the raw fixation that defined his life. It defined hers too.
Before
dawn, their prayers were answered. If not fully recovered, Mr. Saldaña
was at least well enough to get to his feet. Sheer will and adrenaline
would do the rest, allowing him to go on the raid of the ranch where he
knew, deep down, both girls were buried — two bodies among the thousands
lost in the state of Veracruz, among the tens of thousands nationwide.
The couple moved in silence, checking and rechecking their bags. Ms. Delgadillo packed a lunch — apples, carrots and a stew made of vegetables to avoid upsetting his stomach.
She heated water for instant coffee and made toast as Mr. Saldaña searched for his essentials: binoculars, gloves, boots and a battery charger.
Mrs. Delgadillo’s grandchildren — Yunery’s little girls — slept in the second bedroom. After making breakfast, she applied mascara in front of a mirror on the living room wall as Mr. Saldaña finished packing.
“I don’t think we will need this today,” he said, grabbing a long metal spike from behind their vinyl sofa, a crude tool they often used to find mass graves. “I think others will bring theirs for the search.”
They left before sunrise that humid June morning, carrying four bags and a familiar ambivalence, hopeful and afraid of what they might find.
‘The Entire State Is a Mass Grave’
Officially,
the Mexican government acknowledges the disappearances of more than
30,000 people — men, women and children trapped in a liminal abyss —
neither dead nor alive, silent victims of the drug war.
But the truth is no one knows how many people are missing in Mexico.
Not
the government, which does not have a national registry of the missing.
Not the families caught in emotional purgatory. Not the authorities in
states like Veracruz, where both Karla and Yunery disappeared in a
single 24-hour stretch.
When
the new governor of Veracruz began his term last December, the state’s
official figure for the number of missing was in the low hundreds. Upon
the most basic review, the governor revised it — to nearly 2,600.
In
the last year alone, the remains of nearly 300 bodies have been
unearthed from clandestine graves in Veracruz, unidentified fragments
that only begin to tell the story of what has transpired in the state,
and more broadly the nation, over the last decade.
“There
are an infinite number of people who are too scared to even say
anything, whose cases we know nothing about,” said the state’s attorney
general, Jorge Winckler.
Not
that the state could handle many more. In March, Veracruz announced
that it didn’t have money to do DNA tests on the remains that had
already been found, leaving parents like Mr. Saldaña to panhandle in the
street to raise it themselves.
Overwhelmed,
the state also decided to temporarily halt all new searches for
clandestine graves. There was simply nowhere else to put the bodies.
“The entire state is a mass grave,” the attorney general said.
For
more than a decade, cartels across Mexico have taken out their rivals
with utter impunity, tossing their remains into unmarked graves across
the country. Soldiers and law enforcement officers often adopt the same
approach, leaving many families too terrified to ask for help from a
government they see as complicit.
It
is both highly efficient and cruel: Without a body, there can be no
case. And the disappearances inflict a lasting torture on enemies —
robbing them of even the finality of death.
“The
cruelest thing about a disappearance is that it leaves you with this
desperate hope that your child might actually still be alive somewhere,”
said Daniel Wilkinson, a managing director at Human Rights Watch.
“You’re trapped in this horrific limbo where you can’t mourn or move on
because that feels like betrayal, like you’re killing off your own
child.”
Loss, and Then Love
In
the summer of 2013, Mr. Saldaña’s love life was falling apart, which
was hardly new for him. Only, he wasn’t recklessly careering from woman
to woman, as he did when he was a younger man.
This time, his marriage was being torn apart by loss.
In
the two years since Karla’s disappearance, he had become a man consumed
by rage, impotence — and purpose. He spent every day planning his next
search for his daughter, his next interview with her friends, his next
stakeout of the men he thought responsible.
His
wife at the time, who was not Karla’s mother, couldn’t take it. His
single-mindedness was creating another hole in their home. After more
than a decade together, they split.
On
the walls of his new apartment, he taped up pictures of his daughter, a
shrine of sorts. He loved her deeply, but theirs had been a troubled
relationship, volatile. Karla viewed him as a part-time father, an
accusation that stung all the more because it was true.
In
a life ruled by urges, he had fathered nine children, with multiple
women. He was short, with a heavy paunch and a square mustache, and he
pursued women like some people devour food, to the point of addiction.
To support his families, he gave up any chance of going to college and
became a driver, leaving a trail of bitterness.
Finding Karla, in some way, would be his redemption.
She
had disappeared with one of his estranged children, Jesus. The half
brother and sister were close, though Mr. Saldaña rarely saw him, thanks
to an ugly separation with his mother.
Jesus
and Karla had gone out together that night, Nov. 28, 2011, to a party.
They enjoyed the night life, though the clubs and bars were often
populated with members of organized crime. The two were last seen in her
car. It was recovered two days later in the possession of an off-duty
policeman.
Mr.
Saldaña wonders whether some cartel member hit on Karla at a bar that
night, or whether she and Jesus witnessed something they weren’t
supposed to. But as with so many other cases, the circumstances of their
disappearance are unknown.
From
that moment, Mr. Saldaña’s life was re-centered on a single mission —
finding Karla and, with her, Jesus. He joined a collective of families
and began attending meetings.
To
search for a missing loved one in Mexico is to inhabit a life of
desperate entrepreneurialism. Families, resigned to looking on their
own, build coalitions, pressure and cajole officials, and cling to every
shred of hope.
Mr.
Saldaña threw himself into it, combing areas where criminals may have
murdered people, organizing free DNA tests and raising money to pay for
it all.
Continue reading the main story
He
and others scouted out suspicious plots of land, looking for signs of
slightly upturned earth. When they found one, they hammered long metal
crosses six feet into the ground, then wrenched them out to sniff for
the smell of decay. This is how the poor search for their dead.
During
his first year with the collective, he met Ms. Delgadillo, a
43-year-old mother of four with luminous brown skin and green eyes. She
graciously welcomed him.
Like
him, she showed up at every meeting, every fund-raiser and every media
campaign, denouncing the government for its inaction or inefficiency.
She was warm, too, bringing a calming presence to a group often seized
with rage.
She
and Mr. Saldaña had an especially haunting bond. Their children had
disappeared less than a day apart — abducted, they believed, by the same
group of criminals. To them, it seemed inevitable that their children
would be buried in the same place.
Mr.
Saldaña had scoured Veracruz for details of the criminal operation:
where it conducted business, where it buried its enemies. A friend of
Karla’s told him of a ranch where cartel members were believed to
dissolve their victims in acid. He felt, somehow, that this was where
their children had been taken.
He
shared his suspicions, the fruit of his one-man investigation, with Ms.
Delgadillo. They folded their individual searches into one, meeting
over coffee to compare notes, and sometimes just to be in each other’s
company. Slowly, the friendship became something more, a love wrought
from the inescapable forces shaping their lives.
“We
were friends and companions in this fight,” Mr. Saldaña said. “But we
decided to spend our lives together and live this struggle united.”
On
his birthday — May 24, 2015 — he moved in with her, shifting his modest
belongings into the two-bedroom cinder block flat where she lived with
Yunery’s two children.
Their
life moves to the same rhythm these days, an odd cadence that is both
comforting and isolating. Their friends, even their other children, are
afraid of the course they have taken — the endless chase, the constant
pressure on state authorities, the media campaigns.
They
don’t tell people anymore when they find threatening letters on the
windshield of their Volkswagen. Or when strangers call their phones with
cryptic, menacing messages, ordering them to stop their crusade. The
traumas have drawn them closer as a couple, but farther from their
families.
“It
just leaves you with so little time to raise and be a parent to the
rest of your kids,” said Ms. Delgadillo, whose contact with her two
other children tapered off in recent years.
Mr.
Saldaña nodded. “One of my daughters called me up recently and said she
wanted to chat. We went to a coffee shop and she told me: ‘Dad, please,
I want to ask you to stop doing what you are doing. I am scared, scared
for you, scared for me and for all of us. Please, just stop.’”
“I
told her: ‘How could I stop looking for her? She is my daughter, she is
your sister,’” he said. “I will never ever stop looking for her.”
He wiped away a stray tear and cleared his throat.
“It’s like you lose your other children as well,” he said.
Continue reading the main story
The Dirty War Then — and Now
To
disappear has a particular meaning in Latin America, a vocabulary
shared by nations that have suffered its tragic distinction. It is not
simply to vanish, but to be vanished: forcibly abducted and, often,
never seen again.
In
the 20th century, the authoritarian governments of Argentina and Chile
disappeared thousands of supposed opposition members, robbing spouses,
parents and children of closure. Guatemala and El Salvador razed
communities of accused sympathizers, both before and during their
ultraviolent civil wars.
Mexico
took part in the campaign, amassing some 1,200 disappearances during
the 1960s and 1970s at the hands of the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, which ruled for nearly 70 years and governs again today.
Historians call this period of disappearances the dirty war.
But
unlike Argentina, Chile or Uruguay, Mexico never really investigated
its atrocities. While truth commissions and exhumations of mass graves
sought to exorcise the sins of past regimes elsewhere in the region,
government responsibility in Mexico largely stayed buried. Attempts in
the early 2000s fell apart, leading to few arrests or prosecutions.
As the nation wrestled with that mysterious chapter of Mexican history, another was already starting.
The
disappearances continued, in a new form. The numbers were small, the
cases isolated and the purpose distinct from earlier iterations. It was
not political but criminal.
This
time, the disappearances were carried out by organized crime as it
battled for territory in the lucrative drug trade. Along the border with
Texas, the numbers slowly ticked higher. The government eventually
launched a war against organized crime in 2006. And as the violence
mounted, so did the disappearances.
The
cartels are not the only ones responsible. In hundreds of cases, the
military and the police have been accused of disappearing individuals
across Mexico’s coasts, deserts and mountains.
The
families of victims in Baja California have meticulously documented 95
cases involving the authorities and delivered them to the International
Criminal Court with a plea to investigate. Five hundred cases have been
recorded in Coahuila and sent to the court as well. Similar
disappearances in Chihuahua and Guerrero have also been brought to the
attention of international bodies.
Until
recently, the disappearances were largely ignored by a government
neither willing nor capable of effectively confronting the atrocities.
But as families have become more organized, their plight has become
harder to ignore.
In
2012, leaked documents showed that the government believed there to be a
total of 25,000 people missing across the country, perhaps the first
time any official recognition of the problem surfaced. This year, the
tally climbed to nearly 33,000.
Continue reading the main story
The Search at the Ranch
The
convoy left at 6:30 a.m. sharp, a procession of camouflage trucks
bearing marines, police officers and officials. Mr. Saldaña and Ms.
Delgadillo trailed in a small van transporting the families.
After
countless phone calls beseeching the government for help, hundreds of
hours chasing down leads, years of rallying other families and stalking
officials with a megaphone of grief, Mr. Saldaña and Ms. Delgadillo were
getting a shot. Maybe their only shot.
They
drove for nearly an hour, slowing in the town of Cosautlán de Carvajal,
the last population center before the ranch Mr. Saldaña had heard
about. Like many places taken over by organized crime in rural Mexico,
the property was scarcely discussed in town. Locals knew not to ask what
the armed men were doing up there. They began to whisper as the convoy
passed through the narrow streets, wondering what was happening.
Past
a creek flowing over an unpaved road, the vehicles came to an entrance.
The marines got out and began a clearing operation that lasted three
hours.
The
ranch, meandering over expansive terrain, had been abandoned. But only
recently. The team — a mix of forensic scientists, police officers and
investigators — discovered healthy horses, cattle and well-tended sheep
roaming around when they arrived.
The
couple wandered the grounds in a dream state, led more by instinct than
clues. They stumbled on a large metal bin filled with dirt and random
pieces of clothing, perhaps, they thought, the belongings of captives.
Having been the engine behind the entire raid, Mr. Saldaña tried to take control, barking orders.
Continue reading the main story
The officials grew weary of his commands. He was pointing to undisturbed earth, where the police dogs caught no scent.
“I’m
not simply looking for the remains,” he shouted. “I know you want to
find body parts, but I have information that our kids were probably
dissolved in acid or burned.”
“I’m looking for buried clothing,” he said, “and ashes.”
A woman from the federal prosecutor’s office intervened.
“All authorities are here to listen to the requests of these two,” she instructed the others.
The
next day, they continued searching but came away with more questions
than answers. A cinder block room contained a soiled mattress and chains
— some grisly torture chamber, the couple imagined. Nearby, a stack of
women’s undergarments — bras and panties — tied together.
What
other use could this room have had than torturing and imprisoning
people, Mr. Saldaña wondered. “No one would even hear if someone was
screaming at the top of their lungs from here,” he said.
He
and Ms. Delgadillo continued down the hill for another kilometer. He
carried a metal stick with a hook fixed on its end, to pry loose items
from the soft earth. His hook snagged a piece of clothing, and then
another, and another. He laid them in a pile at his feet and called for
help.
The
forensic specialists took over, drawing a circle around the spot. They
dug. An hour later, a pile of 500 items sat before them: baby outfits,
women’s blouses, worn-out jeans and shoes.
A
profound sadness settled over Mr. Saldaña. He took no comfort in
finding the clothes that he had chastised officials to look for, no
comfort in being right. It only reminded him how far they were from
finding Karla, Jesus and Yunery.
“I
wonder if this clothing might be as close as we ever get to our
children,” he said to Ms. Delgadillo. “That its very existence means we
may never reach them.”
The
authorities gave the families one more day to search the property, a
stretch of land that would take 10 times that many people a week to
cover.
They found nothing else.
Continue reading the main story
‘A Body, Any Body’
In
Veracruz, the missing are not only buried in secret graves. They are
also recorded in small black books, where their names and details are
lost to the modern age.
The
state’s forensic laboratory chief, Rita Adriana Licea Cadena, pulled
out a ledger. In it, she said, were the names of thousands of
individuals who had turned over their DNA in the hope that it might
match some of the remains disinterred from mass graves across the state.
But
no one had been able to computerize the records, which were drawn from
2010 to 2013, some of the most violent years in the state. In notebook
form like this, the data was virtually useless. No one could
realistically search the DNA samples to find a match.
“We just don’t have enough people to do the work,” she said this March.
Outside
her offices, a family sat quietly in the lobby, hoping for some news.
The families come often, asking questions no one can answer.
“One
woman came into my office crying, asking me to give her a body, any
body, so she could bury it as her son,” said Mario Valencia, the
official in charge of all forensics in the state. “I told her I could
not: ‘How can I take someone else’s child to satisfy your grief? What
about their grief?’”
The
cause of the disappeared was often a forgotten one — until 43 college
students vanished at once on Sept. 26, 2014, forcing a national
reckoning in Mexico.
The
students, who were preparing to become teachers, were heading to a
protest in Mexico City. They had commandeered a fleet of buses to get
there, a practice more or less accepted over the years.
But that night, the police opened fire,
creating a panic that left at least six people dead. The remaining 43
students, frozen in fear, were rounded up by the police and turned over
to a criminal gang that the officers were working for.
The
motive for the attack has never been fully explained, and after more
than three years, only one of the student’s remains has been positively
identified.
After
the mass abduction, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans poured into the
streets in protest. The entire world was shocked. Mexican officials had
not only failed to find the students. Some were clearly complicit in the
crime.
Scenes of relatives hunting
in the forested mountains of Guerrero for mass graves, equipped with
little more than picks, shovels and blind resolve, reinforced the extent
of the phenomenon.
The
public pressure helped lead to a new law, enacted this month, to combat
disappearances. Its passage has given some hope that the proper
resources and attention might be paid to an issue long bled of both.
“It
will not solve the problem, but it’s a start,” said Juan Pedro
Schaerer, the director of the International Committee of the Red Cross
in Mexico, who helped shape the legislation. “The challenge will be
implementing the law.”
On
paper, the Law Against Forced Disappearances creates a national
registry of the missing, something that is currently maintained
piecemeal across multiple lists, by multiple agencies. It should also
bring more resources, for forensic investigations and the management of
precious DNA information.
“Attending
to the disappeared is my main priority, both as a public official and
as a human,” said Roberto Campa, the subsecretary for human rights in
the country’s interior ministry.
But
in Mexico, laws are seldom the issue; on paper, they are often perfect.
Rather, change hinges on the will and capacity to enforce them. On this
score, advocates for the disappeared have tempered their hopes.
A highly touted legal overhaul, completed last year to replace an antiquated system, is facing an attack from the government that put it into practice.
Amid new laws to protect the nation’s media, more journalists have been killed this year than in any other in recent history.
Meanwhile, anti-corruption efforts passed with great fanfare this year have been met with scandal after scandal and a refusal to investigate.
Continue reading the main story
Raised Hopes, and Dashed Ones
The
couple’s next target — another ranch, this one tucked into the verdant
hillsides of central Veracruz — was abandoned when they arrived in late
September.
A
local lawyer from the prosecutor’s office had agreed to join the pair,
out of a sense of solidarity. As they climbed a hill, Mr. Saldaña looked
over at the young prosecutor and asked him where his gun was.
The man pulled a bible out of his pocket and said it was all the protection he needed.
Mr. Saldaña told him he was stupid.
Locals
living nearby had whispered to Mr. Saldaña that the suspects in his
daughter’s disappearance were using the place a few times a month, to
conduct business and throw parties.
Mr.
Saldaña had decided to take a look. But he agonized over whether to
tell Ms. Delgadillo. Even as he packed his bags, walking stick and
binoculars, he had still not made up his mind. Feeling guilty, he gave
in.
As
he had suspected, she immediately began packing her things, waving away
his protests. They both knew he couldn’t deny her, not after the last
few months she had endured.
In
April, the couple had been scouring the state, as usual, asking to
review case files, poring over the descriptions and pictures of missing
persons. Suddenly, they got a hit.
The
girl was short, with the same hair color and complexion as Yunery. Ms.
Delgadillo could barely breathe. She begged the authorities to exhume
the body for a DNA test.
“It
wasn’t my daughter,” she said, sobbing lightly. “But still I feel a
sense of peace, that another family has their daughter back, that they
can stop looking.”
After
that, Mr. Saldaña knew he couldn’t tell Ms. Delgadillo to stay home
while he went out on his missions. With the prosecutor in tow, the
couple searched the ranch for three hours that fall day, making their
way through heavy brush before coming across a set of stables. The
entrance was locked. Mr. Saldaña scaled the wall and jumped inside. A
flock of bats stirred.
Once
again, scattered throughout, were clothes belonging to a mishmash of
ages and sexes. Some had been burned, and others were puzzling — like
the stack of heavy coats in a state where the temperatures range from
hot to infernal.
Further on they found what looked like tombs.
“It could be something,” Mr. Saldaña said, beaming.
They
didn’t have the tools needed to open the covers, so they moved on.
Later, they heard the sound of all-terrain vehicles, a favorite mode of
transport for cartel lookouts.
The three fled, racing down the hill and back to the car.
Continue reading the main story
Dreams of the Dead
A
crowd of portraits lined the esplanade, taped down against the fierce
harbor wind. A woman paused to study them, as if to remember every
detail. But most bore only two: the names of missing people and the
dates they disappeared, simple facts anchored in mystery.
“I
loved you before I knew you, and I will love you to the end of my
days,” read one poster with the faces of more than a dozen missing
children, arrayed along the branches of a tree.
Mr.
Saldaña, watching from the shade, sheepishly approached the woman to
ask for help. His daughter was among those faces, he explained, pointing
to a portrait of Karla.
“The
government is out of money to buy the materials for DNA testing,” he
told the stranger, lifting a straw hat from his head and mopping his
brow. “So we are raising the money ourselves to pay for it.”
Dozens
of other relatives of Mexico’s missing had joined him in the port city
of Veracruz that bright Saturday in October, all to raise money for a
government that, in their eyes, seemed incapable of helping them — or
unwilling to. When told of their campaign, the federal government denied
that it was necessary, saying it provides all the resources needed for
DNA testing.
“My
brother disappeared, too,” the woman told Mr. Saldaña, nodding tightly.
A year of searching had produced no leads, she said, not in a state
bankrupted by its previous governor, who has been charged with stealing
millions of dollars.
“This
is our government,” the woman concluded, fishing a small bill from her
pocket and putting it into a slotted tin. “They took it all for
themselves.”
The
sun cast an acid wash over the port as Mr. Saldaña returned to the
shade. Cargo vessels trudged in and out of the channels. Shipping cranes
lined the sky like origami birds.
The
other families waded into the blistering heat to approach passers-by,
or to give chase when the breeze blew away the portraits of their
children.
Everyone
except for Ms. Delgadillo, who remained in the sun for most of the day,
tending to all the portraits as if each one were her child.
It
was humbling work. Most pedestrians slid past without a word. A few
even picked up the pace when they saw a parent approaching.
“You
sometimes wonder how it is that someone can’t even give one dollar,”
Mr. Saldaña said, after being blown off by a Frenchman on holiday. “I
guess they just don’t know what we are living.”
Continue reading the main story
Kindness
surfaced in unexpected places. Christian Carrillo Rios, an employee at
the state victim’s assistance program, arrived with the parents shortly
after 9 a.m., wearing a collared shirt and starched jeans in the
stifling heat.
He
crawled on the ground to tape down the portraits and chased spare
change as if he, too, had lost someone. Ashamed that his office had
refused to pay for refreshments for the families, he bought water and
snacks on his own dime.
“I’ve
always cared about this issue, but when I had a son last year it all
changed,” he said, his voice breaking. He cleared his throat and shook
his head. “If someone were to take my child from me, I don’t know how I
could go on living.”
Two
young brothers were so moved by the stories of loss that they raced
home to retrieve the contents of their piggy bank. They returned with a
bag full of change covered in bits of smashed clay.
A
father who heard about the campaign on the radio took his entire
family. He listened to a mother talk about her lost son while holding
the hand of his own, weeping. Before he left, he emptied his wallet into
the collection box.
“Most
of the time we feel impotent and powerless, but when you see the
goodness of people it gives you strength,” Mr. Saldaña said.
The
families stood outside for 10 hours that day, until sunset, earning a
little less than $600 — the equivalent of three DNA tests.
As
a couple, Mr. Saldaña and Ms. Delgadillo have decided to adopt a new
approach to mourning. Instead of learning to live without their
children, they are trying to live with them. To celebrate them every
day.
This
October, the couple decided to throw their daughters a joint birthday
party, with cake, candles and balloons. The girls’ birthdays were only
days apart.
Mr.
Saldaña and Ms. Delgadillo wanted to invite their extended family — the
other parents, husbands and wives who had lost someone.
“We wanted to do something happy with them,” Mr. Saldaña explained.
“This way, until we find them, we will keep them present in our lives,” Ms. Delgadillo added.
But
their plans soon gave way to reality, and there was no party. Between
the trips up and down the state and basic necessities, they had no money
for it.
Despite
everything, Mr. Saldaña said he was filled with more hope these days
than ever. He dreamed about Karla, felt her close to him, as if the end
was near.
In
a recent dream, he confronted the men responsible for Karla’s
abduction. With an arsenal of automatic weapons, he fought them like an
action hero, leaving no survivors.
In
the dream, he said, it was up to him and no one else. No failing
system, numb to his pleas. No crooked cops or courts that so often
failed to reach convictions in Mexico. Only justice.
“If you kill them,” he said, “at least it’s over.”
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