'Hope Never Dies': Swiss Help Mexicans Tackle Enforced Disappearances

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Ceci Patricia Flores, dressed in long sleeves and jeans, a pink cap shielding her face from the sun, buries a wire rod as deep into the ground as she can. She then pulls it out and brings the buried end close to her nose. If she notes the smell of rotting flesh on the rod, it's a sign she must start digging in this exact spot.

This is Flores's daily routine out on the arid terrain of Sonora, a state in northwestern Mexico. The 50-year-old mother of six is searching for the bodies of victims of enforced disappearances in a region where organised crime is rampant.

Among the victims she's looking for are two of her own children. Alejandro, 21, was“disappeared” on October 30, 2015, while travelling from Sonora to the neighbouring state of Sinaloa. Marco Antonio, 32, was taken by a cartel in Bahía de Kino, Sonora, on May 4, 2019, together with his younger brother, Jesús Adrián, 15, who was later released.

“Since then, I am like the walking dead,” says Flores, who in 2019 founded the collective Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, the Searching Mothers of Sonora. Each day she's joined in her search by other mothers and family members with a story similar to her own. They are taking matters into their own hands, says Flores, because“the authorities have so far failed to do it”.

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One mother's anguished search for the disappeared in Mexico

This content was published on Nov 23, 2023 Nov 23, 2023 As Swiss forensic experts help Mexican officials tackle enforced disappearances, SWI swissinfo meets one mother searching for her two missing sons.

Their arduous, unpaid work has extended to other parts of the country, as Mexico faces up to a grim reality: over 110,000 names entered in a national database of missing persons and more than 52,000 unidentified bodies lyingExternal link either in mass graves or in state morgues. Mexican authorities have labelled it a“forensics crisis” and asked other countries, including Switzerland, for assistance.

Lack of capacity

For this task, the Swiss foreign ministry tapped the University of Lausanne's School of Criminal Sciences. Together with the University Centre of Legal Medicine Lausanne-Geneva (CURML), in 2022 the school set up courses in forensic science for Mexican officials involved in search and investigation of the disappeared.

So far, 100 participants – ranging from prosecutors and police officers to forensic pathologists and anthropologists – have taken a basic course, offered remotely and focused on crime-scene investigation, forensic analysis and identification of human remains.

“We are coming from such different environments and complexity in terms of cases that it would be ridiculous to say that we can grasp and tackle the problems [the Mexicans] are facing, and it is not our objective,” explains Christophe Champod, director of the Lausanne school.“What we are trying to do is give them a methodology that they can apply in their own situation.”

That situation is nothing short of daunting. The vast majority of disappearances in Mexico have occurred since the mid-2000s, when authorities launched their war on drugs to root out cartels. Each year, thousands of people disappear at the hands of organised criminal groups or those of government forces.

Most of these cases remain unsolved in what the United Nations callsExternal link a climate of“almost absolute impunity”. According to the national search commission, by 2021 only 36 convictions for disappearances had been handed down.

Among the many challenges facing Mexicans is a lack of resources spread across the country. Skills and funding for search, investigation and prosecution tend to be concentrated at the federal level, says Ana Srovin Coralli, a teaching assistant at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

“There is a huge lack of capacity in terms of premises, laboratories and staff at the local level,” says the PhD student, who wroteExternal link a comprehensive report on Mexico's disappeared for the research institute swisspeace. Some local search commissions, set up by law in each state to look for the disappeared, are understaffed or have no forensic expert on the payroll.

Maximising impact

Although the authorities say they want to tackle these deficits,“there is no systematic and coordinated approach to improving forensics in the country” and little collaboration between some institutions, says Coralli.“This is where I think training can really make a contribution – to reach those that usually don't have the opportunity to gain more knowledge.”

Although the Swiss had no hand in selecting the course participants – this was done by the Mexicans – Champod says they come from different states as well as the federation and occupy various functions. This mix should“maximise the impact” of the training and show the value of working together, he says.

According to Coralli, to be truly effective, any training also needs to be long-term and ideally take place in the field,“to fully address the complexities of the situation”.

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