MOTHER’S CARAVAN OF MISSING MIGRANTS

Por Encarni Pindado

Recently I found myself in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, with the Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants, composed mainly of Central American women, looking for their disappeared sons and daughters.

Some have not heard from them for over 20 years, in other cases, they have disappeared recently, but the common denominator is that they all disappeared in Mexico, while migrating North, looking for the American dream.

This caravan is covered with tears, tears of women who don’t conform not to know what have happened to their sons and daughters, tears that slide down their faces as they travel the same path made by migrants, because they know that somewhere along this route their migrants disappeared.

The mother’s caravan walked between the train tracks, visited bars where women are sexually exploited, went to the ranch in Tamaulipas where 72 migrants were brutally killed more than a year ago and there, they found that many of their belongings were still scattered on the ground. They collect them and gave them to the appropriate authorities, which claimed that all evidence was properly collected at the time and that those things were probably from new migrants passing by. Strange that a migrant would like to walk out of their way in order to sleep in a place that represents death!

The caravan also visited Iztepec Cemetery, where there is a mass grave to bury unidentified migrants "look, they don’t even have a paltry cross" on the mother’s said, let along a DNA database so families could easily search on it, while looking for their missing relatives…

But this caravan is also a caravan of hope; especially when we visit Tapachula’s jail and an officer recognize the photo of the son of one of the mothers.
Apparently, he was admitted to this prison for several years and was recently transferred to another centre, where after 8 years this mother finally gets reunited with her son.