Disappearances in Mexico surge by 200% over 10 years

(Oscar Lopez – The Guardian) It was a bright morning in August 2022 when Ángel Montenegro was taken. A 31-year-old construction worker, Montenegro had been out all night drinking with some work buddies in the city of Cuautla and was waiting for a bus back to nearby Cuernavaca, where he lived. At about 10am, a white van pulled up: several men jumped out and dragged Montenegro and a co-worker inside before speeding off. Montenegro’s co-worker was released a few hundred meters down the street, but Montenegro was driven away. As soon as she heard that her son had been taken, Montenegro’s mother, Patricia García, raced to Cuautla along with Montenegro’s wife, brother and some neighbors. Arriving at the bus stop, all they found were Montenegro’s cap and one of his tennis shoes. The group spent all day looking for any other trace of Montenegro, but came up empty-handed. “The desperation started when night fell,” said García, who has now spent more than three torturous years looking for her son. Montenegro is one of more than 130,000 people who are considered missing or disappeared in Mexico, an ongoing crisis that has devastated tens of thousands of families across the country. While disappearances began to surge in the early 2000s as the Mexican government sought to take on the country’s cartels, a new report by the public policy analysis firm México Evalúa found that, in the last 10 years, disappearances have increased more than 200%. – Disappearances in Mexico surge by 200% over 10 years | Mexico | The Guardian