Mom of man missing in Mexico is killed, search group says

MEXICO CITY — Another mother searching for her disappeared child has been killed in Mexico, the sixth murder of a volunteer search activist in Mexico since the start of 2021.

The volunteer search group known as “A Promise to be Kept” said Teresa Magueyal was killed Tuesday in the violence-wracked city of Celaya, in the north-central state of Guanajuato.

The state prosecutor’s office said it was still investigating the report and could not confirm it.

It was the second such killing in Guanajuato in less than six months. Volunteer searcher Maria Vázquez Ramírez was shot to death in November in the city of Abasolo, Guanajuato.

“In Guanajuato we women searchers are not safe, they kill us in broad daylight, in public, with total impunity,” Magueyal’s group said in a statement, calling the killing “cowardly.”

The motive in the killing remained unclear; most searchers say they are looking for the bodies of their children, not evidence to convict their killers.

Magueyal was active in the search for her son, José Luis, who disappeared in 2020. Mexico has over 112,000 missing people, and relatives of the disappeared often have to search for them because of police inaction.

Police in Mexico often lack the time, expertise or interest to look for the clandestine grave sites where gangs frequently bury them.

Much of that effort has been left to volunteer search teams known as “colectivos” made up of mothers of the missing, who often call themselves as “Searching Mothers.”

Two cartels — Santa Rosa de Lima and the Jalisco cartel — have carried out a years-long turf war for control of Guanajuato state. They kill off rivals, kidnapping victims and innocent people and hide their bodies in mass graves or body dumping grounds.

But the problem is not limited to Guanajuato. In October, attackers in the central city of Puebla shot to death Esmeralda Gallardo, who led efforts to find her missing 22-year-old daughter.

Many mothers carry out their own investigations or join search teams that, often acting on tips, cross gullies and fields, sinking iron rods into the ground to detect the telltale stench of decomposing bodies.

The searchers, and the police who sometimes accompany them, usually focus on finding graves and identifying remains. Search groups sometimes even get anonymous tips about where bodies are buried, knowledge probably available only to the killers or their accomplices.