On Wednesday, the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies’s inaugural Human Rights Lecture and Symposium brought together journalists, scholars and advocates to examine the growing number of disappearances in Mexico. More than 130,000 people are currently designated missing or unlocated in Mexico, a crisis fueled by organized crime, state complicity and decades of violence tied to the country’s drug war, according to speakers at the symposium.
The event, titled “Mexico’s Disappeared,” opened with a statement from CHRHS Director and Professor of International Security and Anthropology Ieva Jusionyte, who said the crisis remains poorly understood in the United States.
Jusionyte also emphasized the role of the United States in shaping the conditions behind such violence.
“Close to 80% of all guns recovered in crime scenes in Mexico that are used in violent crime in Mexico come from (the United States), from Texas and Arizona, but also from all the way up here in the Northeast, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts,” she said.
Mexican investigative journalist Marcela Turati delivered the keynote address. Jusionyte described Turati, whose reporting focuses on forced disappearances and human rights abuses tied to the drug war in Mexico, as a reporter who has helped build networks among journalists investigating human rights.
“Working together helps them stay alive,” Jusionyte added.
In her talk, Turati argued that Mexico’s disappearance crisis is a product of the country’s drug war and state complicity and that the search for the missing has largely been carried out by victims’ families.
Mexico's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Turati explained that disappearances surged after the Mexican government launched a militarized campaign against drug cartels in 2006.
“When Felipe Calderón, our president, declared the war on drugs, my life changed,” she said. “I decided … to write about the victims of violence, this new type of violence that arose in the whole country,” she said.
After becoming a reporter for the magazine Proceso, Turati saw many families approach journalists and newsrooms seeking help locating missing relatives.
“At the beginning it was kind of strange,” she said. “But later, we (started) seeing that in many places we have this phenomenon.”
The Quinto Elemental Lab, an organization focused on investigative reporting that Turati co-founded in 2017, has analyzed data related to disappearances in Mexico. When looking at data from the National Register of Missing and Disappeared Persons, a database tracking disappearances in Mexico nationwide, they identified that the number of disappearances was higher among younger people.
While disappearances of men comprise the majority of disappearances in Mexico, disappearances of women are a “really big problem” in southern states, Turati said. Journalists are having a difficult time investigating these disappearances because the “government hide(s) the data,” she added.
Journalists have also had a difficult time interviewing survivors who are “terrorized” by what happened to them, having to rely on different avenues of investigation instead. These have included interviewing relatives of survivors and mapping mass graves across the country.
Turati also described how families — particularly mothers — have become central investigators in the search for missing relatives.
According to Turati, these women, called “madres buscadoras,” or searching mothers, have been “dedicated” to searching for their missing loved ones.
“They are the real protagonists. They are the real investigators that give us (much) of the information that we have,” she said.
For attendees, the event offered a valuable opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of human rights work in practice.
For Avani Ashtekar GS, second-year Ph.D. student in anthropology and a CHRHS affiliate, hearing from “people who are doing the work on the ground sort of gives you insight into what human rights in practice looks like.”
Ashtekar added that the talk also offered a useful perspective into her own research on the India-Bangladesh border.
“It gave me a sort of helpful way of comparing cases, without saying that they are the same or different.” she said.
During a Q&A session after the talk, Turati noted that the normalization of violence in Mexico has also been central to this crisis.
“For us, it’s kind of normal,” she said. “Even for us journalists who cover this.”
Ivy Huang is a university news and science & research editor from New York City Concentrating in English, she has a passion for literature and American history. Outside of writing, she enjoys playing basketball, watching documentaries and beating her high score on Subway Surfers.
Miriam Davison is a Senior Staff Writer for University News covering Academics & Advising. She is a first-year from Los Angeles, CA and plans to study tentatively the realm of International & Public Affairs and English, though her interests span from linguistics to history to music. In her free time, she plays on one of Brown's ultimate frisbee teams and likes writing silly poems.
