Thousands of people have held protests across Mexico to highlight the country's many enforced disappearances and demand more action by officials to tackle them.
Relatives and friends of missing people, as well as human rights activists, marched through the streets of Mexico City, Guadalajara, Córdoba, and other cities calling for justice and urged the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum to help find their missing loved ones.
More than 130,000 people have been reported as missing in Mexico. Almost all the disappearances have occurred since 2007 when then-President Felipe Calderón launched his 'war on drugs.'
In many cases, those disappeared have been forcibly recruited into the drug cartels – or murdered for resisting.
While drug cartels and organized crime groups are the main perpetrators, security forces are also blamed for deaths and disappearances.
The widespread demonstrations illustrated the extent of the disappearances affecting communities and families across the country. Activists and family members from southern states like Oaxaca to northern ones like Sonora and Durango turned out to demand that authorities address the issue.
In Mexico City, the march brought traffic in the capital to a standstill. Many affected families have formed search teams, known as 'buscadores,' who scour the countryside for mass graves.
These buscadores engage in search efforts at great personal risk; recent discoveries involving suspected narco-related sites have resulted in several of them disappearing.
The United Nations has described this crisis as 'a human tragedy of enormous proportions,' noting that Mexico's disappearance rates exceed even the darkest periods in other Latin American countries.
