Many go missing on Mexican 'highway of death.' Their families continue to search for them
Note from the editor: Names of victims and their loved ones have been altered for their safety.
They call it "the highway of death," or "carretera de la muerte."
It's a 136-mile highway that connects the cities of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, and Monterrey, Nuevo León in México, and in it dozens of people have disappeared, leaving their loved ones and Mexican authorities clueless as to their whereabouts.
In September, México's National Search Commission reported that at least 71 people have disappeared while traveling on the highway since October 2020 — about half a dozen are Americans, according to the data.
Relatives of those missing, however, say that the victims exceed 150.
The case of Pedro who disappeared on April 23 is just one of them.
That day, Pedro was traveling on that highway accompanied by a friend. They were running a private taxi service that day and transporting two families from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey. Pedro's wife, Juana María said that he contacted her when they were already on their way back to Monterrey.
She hasn't heard from him since.
Four families lost contact with their loved ones that day. Their loved ones made the decision to travel on this "highway of death" and joined the more than 11,000 people who have gone missing since 1964 in the state of Tamaulipas. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, Tamaulipas is one of the states with the highest number of forced disappearances.
The incessant search that Juana María undertook since that day in April is one that hundreds of families go through every year in the states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas in search of their loved ones. They meet online with others who suffer the same loss, start their own search parties and join efforts across the country to locate their loved ones.
That's how the collective “We Are All One, Collective Searching for Disappeared from Nuevo León in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas” was born.
A unified front
After hours of not hearing from her husband in April, Juana María went to the authorities in Nuevo León to file a missing person report. However, because her husband went missing on a stretch of the highway that was within the border of the state of Tamaulipas, she was told to file the report there.
She did as asked and to date hasn't received an update on her husband's case. Juana María's experience is just one example of the little support that the families of those that go missing on that highway have from the authorities.
"Where do we go? Where do we ask? At some point I said 'if I were here (in Nuevo León), I think the police, with all the data I've provided them with, would have located him by now, dead or alive,'" said Juana María to La Voz/The Arizona Republic. "But over there it is difficult because it is already Tamaulipas — another state."
The attorney general's offices of the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León did not respond to a request for comment.
In her desperation, Juana María began to search on social media, hoping for some kind of clue. What she discovered was something that terrified her: Her husband was not the only one that went missing on that road. There were many cases. And worst of all, after months and even years, their relatives were still searching.
"On Facebook, I started to see that there were more missing people ... that there were too many people who were going through the same thing, and they started contacting me," she said.
This is how the group “We Are All One, Collective Looking for Disappeared from Nuevo León in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas” was formed, unifying hundreds of indirect victims in their struggle to search for their loved ones.
Sebastián is a member of the collective. He has been searching for his brother Jorge since he disappeared on May 25.
According to Sebastián, his brother is one of two engineers from Monterrey who disappeared while traveling on the highway. He said that Jorge and his friend Ricardo were traveling from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo for work.
“On May 24 we had dinner as a family, at home ... Ricardo, who was his friend for years, picked him up the next morning and they left for Nuevo Laredo. And we no longer heard from them," said Sebastián. "We got the locations (of their cell phones) of where they were and it shows that they were in the state of Tamaulipas, at the same point where they all disappear," he said.
Like Juana María, Sebastián and his family filed a missing person report in both states. "From there, we began to investigate, to spread information through social media ... that was how we found out that they weren't the only ones who went missing, that there was a very long list of disappeared," he said. That's when they decided to join the collective.
As more people joined, a list of names of those missing was formed. Some are minors, others are foreigners, and some come from municipalities outside Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, according to the collective's list.
By the end of September, the names of about 150 people comprised the list. “There are three or four women (disappeared). There are at least five minors (between the ages of 3 to 16 years) ... and the rest are men (30 to 35 years)”, Juana María said. "Most of them are truck drivers."
On the group's Facebook page, users post photos of loved ones who have gone missing, oftentimes showing the vehicle they were traveling in. They also post the names of people who have been found — dead and alive.
“There are many people who lost their livelihood, their husbands. They left their children, some who are just a few months old," said Juana María.
A rise in organized crime since 2006
In September, an extermination site, or "campo de exterminio" in Spanish, was located on the outskirts of the city of Nuevo Laredo close to the highway. In this area, “charred human remains were recovered at the surface level,” said Karla Quintana, head of the National Search Commission. She described the scene as "a possible clandestine crematorium and the presence of possible clandestine graves."
According to Quintana, local cartels — in the case of Nuevo Laredo the Cártel del Noreste, a faction of the former Los Zetas cartel — use extermination sites such as the one found to dispose of people they've kidnapped and killed.
The Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) of the United Nations made its first visit to México on Monday, formally starting its 11-day work period in the country to address the thousands of cases of missing persons. Nuevo León and Tamaulipas are among the 12 states the commission intends to visit in order to meet with authorities, victims, civil rights organizations and other human rights institutions.
Alejandro Encinas, the undersecretary of Human Rights, Population and Migration of the Ministry of the Interior, said on Monday during the commission's first session that the disappearances that occur across the country are linked to "the corruption of the police forces, linked to organized crime" that proliferated across the country at the start of the so-called war against drug trafficking, or "guerra contra el narco" in Spanish, in 2006.
According to Encinas, it was this war on drugs that left an "open wound" inherited by presidents to come, "and remains a central point in the search for those disappeared in order to guarantee truth and justice."
Since 2006, when the war on drugs was initiated by former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, 94,000 people have been forcefully disappeared across México.
'Unresponsive' local, state police
Through the collective, families have come together not only to share in their grief but to help each other, especially when it comes to contacting local authorities for updates on their cases.
Most of the reports of people who have gone missing along the highway have to be filed in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, where the majority of the forced disappearances are carried out.
But according to members, each time they reach out to local and state officials, they are either unable to speak with someone or they are told there are no updates in their cases.
In their search for answers and the lack of updates coming from Tamaulipas authorities, the group requested meetings with governors of both states, federal officials and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They've yet to receive a response.
On July 1, however, according to a statement from the Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office, the following terms were agreed to in order to better assist families who search for their loved ones.
- All investigations related to the disappearance on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway will be transferred and investigated in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas.
- Working groups will be hosted to explain case files to indirect victims. They will be hosted in the state of Nuevo León if the majority of cases are located within that state.
- People who cannot travel to Ciudad Victoria will be assisted virtually.
- Meetings will be held in person or virtual with the State Search Commission of Tamaulipas.
- New information should be made known to relatives.
- There will be support from the following: Prosecutors Specialized in the Investigation of Disappearance Crimes, both in Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, and the respective Search Commissions, the Attorney General's Office, the Secretaries of Public Security of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, and support from the Mexican Army and the National Guard.
Despite the agreement established, four months later, Juana María said that officials remain unresponsive.
'Fortunately, we continue searching'
The Tamaulipas Office for Victims of the Disappeared has offered members of the collective support with legal advice, scholarships and food for their families. Representatives from the National Human Rights Commission in México have offered members free therapy sessions as well.
But beyond that, what the group wants is to recover their loved ones. Instead, they are left waiting for answers from local officials who for months have said "we are investigating" and nothing more, Juana María said.
Every time the collective learns of a new extermination site, it causes major concern for all members. Despite the months of zero communication with their loved ones, they remain hopeful that they'll be returned alive.
Juana María has heard of people who have been released after paying sums of over 100,000 Mexican pesos — loved ones fulfilling demands from their kidnappers. In most cases, the freed men do not speak about what happened to them or where they were taken, Juana María said.
“I have been in contact with men who have been returned to their families, but they no longer want to say anything. They only tell us that there were more people (kidnapped), that we should not lose faith," said Juana María. So they keep searching, hopeful that they are still alive.
Sebastián and his family have undergone DNA tests to see if they match with skeletal remains found at these extermination sites. None have matched, which gives them hope that Jorge is still alive and will soon be found.
"Fortunately, we continue searching for him," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Diana García is the México City correspondent for La Voz. Follow her on Twitter @DianaGaav.
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