On Mother’s Day, thousands of mothers, daughters and other family members marched from the Glorieta de las Madres que Luchan (Roundabout of the Mothers who Struggle) towards Mexico City’s iconic Independence Angel. As they took over the city’s busy thoroughfare, they carried photos, banners and posters with the faces of their missing loved ones.
The women took long-distance buses from all over the country to demand justice and truth in Mexico’s capital city. “They took you alive, so we want you back alive”, they chanted, as the protest proceeded through the centre of town.
For them, Mother’s Day is not a day of celebration, but a day of mourning. And beyond collectively expressing their pain, the day is also about shining a light on Mexico’s horrific open secret: the country has officially registered 110,000 missing people.
María is one of these madres buscadoras. I met her in the course of my research on women’s high-risk collective action in Latin America. Her daughter went missing after she went to a party with her boyfriend. María has spent the last five years searching for her. She frequently goes to state authorities, making demands to know how they are progressing in her missing person’s case; she says that she feels ‘revictimised’ every time she is brushed off. She organises search parties where she goes to empty terrain near her home to dig for her daughter’s remains. She participates in marches and protests. She has never given up hope that one day she will learn what happened to her daughter.
Yet searching for missing loved ones comes with high risks of violence. Mothers I have worked with have been stalked, attacked and threatened for the work they do to gather information about the circumstances of their children’s disappearances, and where they might find their remains. Others have been murdered. While the attackers usually remain unidentified, the mothers tell me that they are people who do not appreciate the way that they shine a light on crimes they would prefer to remain in the shadows.
María, for example, has been attacked multiple times by unknown assailants; she now travels with a bodyguard.
Her story is not an anomaly. Only weeks before Mother’s Day, Teresa Magueyal – a mother looking for her disappeared son – was murdered in Celaya, in the state of Guanajuato. Alarms were raised in Sonora, when Ceci Flores, a tireless buscadora (searcher) was kidnapped for a number of hours; thankfully, she returned alive, but for a period of time her supporters and allies feared the worst. Ceci frequently posts on Twitter about the violent threats she receives daily: “I have been sent photos of people being tortured, and told that this is how I am going to end up”, she posted on 29 May.
Beyond physical harm, the mothers also experience social stigma that isolates them from their families and their communities. While this is profoundly difficult emotionally, it also removes an important layer of social protection in the communities plagued by violence where they live.
The dynamics of social stigma that impact the madres buscadoras are complex. For some, they are considered bad mothers for being seen as ‘having permitted’ their children to disappear in the first place. They also face pressures to give up their social, work and family lives to be a ‘good mother’ who searches for her children. Yet even if they go to search, they are often considered ‘bad mothers’ for not taking care of their husbands and remaining children. Any way you look at it, these mothers are socially stigmatised, rather than recognised as victims of horrific and ongoing crimes.
Often, these experiences of violence surrounding disappearances are labelled as private, as they impact women in the domestic, familial sphere. Yet, as family members fill the steps of the Angel on Mother’s Day, the magnitude of the problem of Mexico’s disappearances is laid bare. They hold photos and placards of the sons and daughters who never returned home. They unfurl banners – metres long – with the faces of hundreds of missing people. They fill the centre of the megacity with their grief, making it hard for onlookers to ignore that this is a profoundly public problem.
As they move down the street, the mothers chant “Why do we search for them? Because we love them”. Beyond the risks – and legitimate fears – of facing violence for searching for their missing loved ones, these mothers are relentless in their protest. They draw on expressions of love and care, and they mobilise feelings of injustice and moral outrage to fuel their ongoing high-risk collective action. As Ceci Flores writes online – echoing the words of multiple women I have interviewed for my own research – “I am afraid, but I am more afraid of leaving this world without finding my sons”.
Marching side by side with María and other mothers is a devastating experience. Witnessing raw expressions of unbridled grief is challenging and distressing as a researcher. Yet, María and thousands of others march every Mother’s Day, and will continue to do so until they find information about their children. As a scholar-advocate, I aim to use my research to highlight the complex and high-risk dynamics of their gendered agency. And on a human level, I aim to stand in solidarity with them as they risk their lives in the pursuit of love and justice, for their children and for themselves.
Dr Julia Margaret Zulver is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her research focuses on women’s high-risk leadership in Latin America. Her book High-Risk Feminism in Colombia was published by Rutgers University Press in 2022. Her article “Complex gendered agency in Mexico: how women negotiate hierarchies of fear to search for the disappeared” was published in the European Journal of Politics and Gender in February 2023. Twitter: @JZulver
Complex gendered agency in Mexico: how women negotiate hierarchies of fear to search for the disappeared
by Julia Margaret Zulver for the European Journal of Politics and Gender is available on Bristol University Press Digital here.
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Image credit Julia Zulver.