Who are the Searching Mothers of Mexico?
There are more than 116,000 missing persons in Mexico. Who are the searching mothers and what forms of violence do they face?
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MEXICO CITY, Mexico . Since 2011, in the context of May 10, Mother's Day, the National Dignity March has been held in Mexico: Mothers searching for their daughters, sons, truth, and justice. Women who are mothers scratch the earth, travel through towns, mountains, rivers, and cities searching for their children and all their loved ones who were victims of disappearance or forced disappearance. They are known as searching mothers, trackers. Their love for their children and the State's failure to search for them and find their loved ones led them to organize into networks and collectives for the right to truth and justice.
One of the main slogans of their marches is "we have nothing to celebrate." They march to remind the authorities that they have a duty to guarantee truth and justice for their missing children.
The human rights crisis in Mexico has been going on for decades, but it became more visible in 2007. That was when former President Felipe Calderón declared a "war on drug trafficking" under a failed security strategy in which the armed forces left their barracks to patrol the streets.
Little by little, a word began to gain popularity that would help describe the horror of disappearance: "levantón." It could happen to anyone, whether leaving your house, going to a party, or on the road. Meanwhile, the authorities and the media re-victimized everyone it happened to. "He must have been up to something," they said.
Search history
The mothers and relatives of the missing gradually came together, in groups and then on social media. Today they are spread across the country. Together, they learned how to fill out a location form, how to file a report, how to go out and search the hills. Without protocols and without tools.
Collective meetings, workshops for learning, and knowledge sharing paved the way for important achievements in ensuring truth and justice. Under the motto "nothing without families," they stood firm in the face of the authorities' indifference. They succeeded in having this violence named and classified in the Federal Penal Code, and in the creation of the General Law on Disappearances and the National Search System.
May 10th takes on different meanings for each searching mother. On a social level, it serves as a reminder that many people are still missing, and that there are still pending tasks to be accomplished, such as implementing the law, protocols, funding, and personnel necessary for the search and investigation of missing persons to work. It also serves to ensure the safety and protection of families searching for their loved ones.
“We scratch the earth looking for our loves”
Mireya Montiel Hernández disappeared on September 13, 2014, when she was 18 years old. Her mother, Tranquilina Hernández, is a searcher and reports that her daughter appears as "located" in the National Registry. But Mireya remains missing.
In this investigation conducted by the specialized journalistic project "Where Do the Disappeared Go?", reporter Efraín Tzuc explains how people who have not been found are listed as "located" in the RNPDNO.
“The authorities forced us to be here, to search, because if we don't search for them ourselves, no one else will. We scratch the ground looking for our loved ones. The authorities obstruct us, don't guarantee our safety, much less provide us with tools. They continue to fail to do their job, and for them, our missing people are mere numbers,” Tranquilina Hernández denounces in an interview with Presentes .
The hope of finding
The mothers search in vacant lots, in clandestine graves they locate themselves, in forests, deserts, and rivers. But they also search in the living, going to hospitals, prisons, and investigating homeless people in cities , sex work spots, and places like bars where human trafficking may be taking place .
Since 2016, the Red de Enlaces network has organized national search brigades, where families of missing persons share their knowledge and learn how to search. Little by little, they become experts and even create tools, such as the "T" rod, which is used to dig into graves without damaging small bones that may belong to their children or someone else.
Tranquilina Hernández took one of these workshops almost ten years ago and immediately wanted to put that knowledge to use in her search for her daughter, Mireya. Tranquilina recently went to Baja California with another fellow searcher; it's the fifth time she's traveled through the state. "I'm back now because last time I found clues about Mireya in the red-light district and the homeless areas," she says.
During the searches, they found a homeless man whose family had filed a missing person report in 2015. That particular experience, and what it meant to find a person alive and still being searched for by his family, redoubled Tranquilina's hope of finding her daughter Mireya.
We need more than 116 thousand people
In Mexico, 116,294 people are missing from their homes, and their families are missing them.
This is the number of missing persons in Mexico since 1964, according to the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons ( RNPDNO ), managed by the National Commission for the Search for Persons (CNB). However, it must be said that 97% of these cases occurred after 2006 and do not represent the true magnitude of the tragedy.
Today, the Mexican government, under the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, insists that the number of missing persons is decreasing under his administration, arguing that they have located people "house by house." However, families of victims of disappearances report that this government is disappearing their relatives for a second time, that is, from the National Registry itself.
The violence that seeking mothers face
Collectives of searching mothers have repeatedly denounced the threats and violence they receive for continuing to search for their children and family members.
From negligence, omissions, and the State's failure to search for its missing persons, to the denial of its active participation in decision-making as established by the General Law on Enforced Disappearances of Persons . This includes direct threats, attacks, disappearances, and murders.
At the hearing "Mexico: Protection of Women Searchers" before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in February 2024, the Mexican state provided no answers to clarify the 22 murders of searchers. Of these, 15 occurred during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Of the total, eight were women searchers. From June 2023 until the end of his term, the then president refused to meet with various collectives and groups of families and mothers searching in Mexico.
The Mexican state and its denialism
In April 2025, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) launched a process into the crisis of disappearances in Mexico . It considered that enforced disappearances "occur in a widespread or systematic manner." The UN noted that there is information with "well-founded indications" that warrants reviewing the situation at the General Assembly level.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded by saying, "There is no forced disappearance by the State," and she attributed the problem primarily to organized crime .
The application of Article 34 may represent an opportunity to recognize and address the crisis of disappearances, which, according to official data , amounts to 133,040 missing persons.
Under Claudia Sheinbaum's administration, groups of family members of searchers, including searching mothers, continue to demand that the president's proposals, which already exist in the current law regarding the National Forensic Data Bank, and the 72-hour protocol, remain unimplemented.
They have also denounced a strategy of "silence" on the part of this government following the announcements of its policies regarding the disappearance crisis, aimed at minimizing the demands of searching families. A stance similar to that maintained by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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