Death stalks Mexico’s disappeared searchers: ‘If you keep looking, we will kill you’

Beneath the cooling towers of Mazatlán’s power plant in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a dozen women pick through marshland, searching for upturned soil and scent that betrays a buried body.

They belong to Hearts United for One Cause, one of hundreds of collectives across Mexico looking for missing relatives.

But these searchers have been marked by another layer of tragedy: one was murdered in February, another disappeared in October.

They epitomize a grim trend in Mexico, where the number of searchers who are themselves murdered or disappeared has soared.

“We’ve suffered these two heavy blows,” said Noemí Padilla, the collective’s leader, who has herself been threatened with forced disappearance.

“And I don’t know if they were meant as a kind of warning,” she added.

The number of registered missing in Mexico has climbed relentlessly for two decades, surpassing 130,000, as warring organized crime groups began recruiting by force and burying, burning, or dissolving victims with acid to conceal crimes and spread terror.

Consecutive governments have failed to stop the disappearances.

A UN committee recently said there were indications of state security forces’ involvement in some cases, describing these as crimes against humanity, though the current government rejected the report as “biased.”

Now organized crime groups appear to be going further, eliminating the only people who truly search for the disappeared: their relatives.

According to Artículo 19, a human rights organization, at least 44 people, mostly women, have been murdered or disappeared since 2010.

But the rate has accelerated: 18 incidents occurred under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador from 2018 to 2024, while 15 have happened in the 19 months since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office.

“2025 was the most deadly year yet, with seven murders and four disappearances,” said Jessica Alcázar of Artículo 19.

“It’s a message of terror: ‘If you keep looking, we will kill or disappear you too,'” she said.

Sinaloa is among the worst-hit states.

When Rubí Patricia Gómez missed a meeting in late February, collective members became uneasy and went to her home.

“I remember going up the stairs, calling her name,” said Laura Ivonne Valdés, a friend from the collective who is searching for her uncle, Ricardo Ramírez Uribe.

“The door was ajar. And that’s how I found her,” Valdés said.

Gómez had been stabbed 14 times.

Authorities quickly arrested a man who allegedly knew her and had gone to her home to collect a debt, ending in her killing.

But questions remain, Valdés said; Gómez had never mentioned debts or threats.

Months earlier, María de los Ángeles Valenzuela, a collective founder, was taken from her home and bundled into a car by two armed men.

“Now we’re looking for her too,” said Padilla, whose son Juan Carlos Rivera Padilla disappeared in 2019.

The marshland around the power plant, with its spongy soil, has yielded discoveries before.

This time, someone spotted an arm bone among the mangrove roots.

Women gathered as Valdés swung a pickaxe in brutal arcs.

“Does the soil feel loose?” the women asked. “Does it smell?”

María de los Ángeles Bernal, searching for her son Emanuel Garay Bernal, placed an electric candle with the face of San Judas, patron saint of lost causes, beside the bone.

Bernal is one of many mothers seeking sons who disappeared since war broke out between factions of the Sinaloa cartel in September 2024.

“They started disappearing lots of young people then, and it hasn’t stopped,” Bernal said.

“At first I refused to believe it, but maybe he was recruited by force,” she added.

The war has left more than 6,000 dead or missing so far.

“We don’t know if our sons are alive, if they’re out there being made to work,” said Padilla.

“Whenever we eat, we wonder if they’ve eaten. When it’s hot, we wonder if they have water. When it rains, we wonder if they have shelter,” she said.

“Whenever I go out searching, I feel like he could be here,” Padilla said, looking around. “But I can’t find him.”

In the field, searchers are often shadowed by armed police and soldiers.

But they are most vulnerable when they break up and go home, often to the same neighborhoods where their relatives disappeared.

After attacks on the collective, Padilla and Valdés, the most visible members, received government protection: cameras for homes and cars, an emergency phone number, and occasional patrols for a month or two.

Both said it was not enough for them or the rest of the collective.

They want every member to get a panic button to alert authorities immediately if in danger.

Another way to protect searchers would be thorough investigations and prosecution of attackers.

“But, shamefully, most of the cases we have documented have gone unpunished,” said Alcázar.

“There’s a lack of political will to really guarantee their protection or to even recognise what’s happening to them,” she added.

The federal institution responsible for protecting human rights defenders did not respond to an interview request.

Soon, Valdés and others had dug half a meter deep, finding only earth, roots, rocks.

Bernal picked up the candle and flicked off the light. Power lines overhead fizzed with electricity.

“Of course we’re afraid. With things how they are in Sinaloa, you can’t trust anyone,” said Bernal.

“But if we don’t look for them, who will?” she asked.