Search for missing stepped up in southern Mexican state
Acapulco — Relatives of the missing headed to Acapulco, a resort city in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, this weekend to provide DNA samples to investigators.
The federal Attorney General’s Office said it would work with state prosecutors and the non-governmental organization Familias de Acapulco en Busca de sus Desaparecidos (Acapulco Families Searching for the Missing) April 5-7 to gather DNA samples in an effort to locate and identify people who disappeared.
“Forty-six DNA samples were taken in the (first) two days” of the operation, Janeth Galeana Campos, the NGO’s secretary, told EFE.
Familias de Acapulco en Busca de sus Desaparecidos was founded in 2016 and counts 150 families whose loved ones have disappeared as members.
Relatives of missing people find their lives disrupted and often devote all their time to the search for their loved ones, joining others in the same situation in the hopes of making progress.
The Beltran Rosas, for example, have spent years searching for their son, Jose Alberto, who would now be 50.
“I don’t wish this on anyone, you can’t live. I don’t know what hurts anymore, what I have, I wake up every day with something else,” 74-year-old Elvira Rosas said.
Elvira and her husband, Trinidad Beltran, 86, vowed to keep searching for their son despite their advanced ages.
“When I wake up every day, the first thing I do is make the sign of the cross and ask God to give me ... the opportunity to know where my son is, whatever the situation, and if He lets me go get him, to bring him so he can rest in his land, which is Acapulco. It would be my greatest joy,” Rosas said.
Beltran, for his part, told EFE that the families were not seeking to lay the blame on anyone, just to find the missing.
“We’ve been trying to investigate this whole time with relatives who are in different parts of the state or in other places, but we haven’t received any positive responses,” Beltran said.
In 2017, Guerrero ranked fourth among Mexico’s states in terms of the number of people reported missing, with a total of 105, or 3.0 per 100,000 inhabitants, exceeding the national rate of 1.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, the Government Secretariat’s National Missing Persons Registry said.
The Beltran Rosas family is not alone in its experiences.
Maria Eugenia has been searching for her eldest son since he was apparently kidnapped on Jan. 7, 2014.
“I got a call that they wanted 500,000 pesos (nearly $26,000) as ransom for my son. I didn’t have it, I didn’t have that kind of money. We had 200 pesos (about $10),” she said, crying while clutching a photograph of her missing son.
Maria Eugenia said she hoped that someone would see the photograph and recognize her son.
“I wish a thousand times that they had found my son and not the SUV,” Maria Eugenia said. “I still have faith in God that he is alive.”
In the wake of her son’s disappearance, Maria Eugenia said she and her relatives changed their routines completely and no longer feel safe, fearing that they might be also be abducted.
“I’m always thinking (about it) when my kids go out, I pray to God to protect them and keep them on the right path,” she said.
