The parents of María Fernanda Contreras did not hear from her for almost 120 hours. There were five days of anguish during which they walked the streets of Apodaca – a municipality in the Mexican state of Nuevo León – trying to find a clue or someone who could help them find their daughter.
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Marifer, as her relatives affectionately called her, left her house on the night of April 3 to meet some friends, but after that Sunday she never returned.
“She sent a message to her mother at 9 pm to tell her that she was on her way back, but hours passed and nobody knew anything. That worried my uncles. At 11 pm they called friends (of Marifer) to find out where he was, but nobody knew,” María José Ruiz, María Fernanda’s cousin, told EL TIEMPO.
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The anguish of the disappearance grew and, in the early hours of the following Monday, Luis Carlos, the father, filed a formal complaint with the authorities, which led to a search file.
“27 years old; Mexican; straight dark brown hair to her shoulders; fair complexion and dark brown eyes; medium height; black pants, white blouse with vertical white, black and brown stripes; she drives in a Mazda 3 vehicle.”
That was the description that the Nuevo León Prosecutor’s Office published to try to find María Fernanda.
But the hours passed and there was no answer. The Contreras family did not want to sit idly by. Given the lack of information from the authorities, parents, uncles, cousins and friends organized search groups to follow the last steps of the young woman.
On Thursday of that week, a rumor began to circulate in the local media of Nuevo León that allegedly the authorities had found the body of a young woman in an abandoned house.
The chat message he sent to his mother was key to determining the location of the missing person’s cell phone.
The GPS signal marked a location within a range of 1.2 kilometers in the Exhacienda Santa Rosa neighborhood, where the young woman had gone to meet a co-worker with whom she would arrange a car deal and to claim money that they owed him. And although that information was shared with the search authorities of Nuevo León, María José assures that in the first hours no investigator appeared in that area.
“My uncle (Luis Carlos) went with a friend and they were going around the neighborhood for several hours. They checked the carports (garages) of the houses, but they found nothing. Although the family also gave that information to the authorities, the only one they were looking for during the first hours of the disappearance was my uncle,” added Ruiz.
Two days later, María Fernanda’s Mazda car was found on one side of the Palace of Justice, in the Nuevo Morelos neighborhood, in Monterrey, a few kilometers from Apodaca, but until then there had been no news of her.
On Thursday of that week, a rumor began to circulate in the local media of Nuevo León that allegedly the authorities had found the body of a young woman in an abandoned house, which was precisely near the last signal issued by the mobile.
Nevertheless, the authorities only confirmed until a day later that it was María Fernanda, who died violently from a blunt blow to the head. Currently, a former partner of his is linked as responsible for the death.
a multiplied drama
The case of María Fernanda is part of the spiral of crimes, disappearances and homicides that occur daily in Mexico, a country where more than 10 women are murdered every day and there are almost 100,000 people who have disappeared since 1964, of which more than 24,000 are women.
Recently, the country has faced a wave of disappearances whose epicenter is the state of New Mexico. Among them is the case of Debanhi Escobar, the 18-year-old girl who was found dead in a motel cistern, and whose causes have not yet been clarified.
Although both cases are still under investigation, neither is femicide ruled out, a crime that reflects the violence in the country and the problems of the authorities to investigate effectively and quickly.
In total, according to figures compiled by the Mexican portal La Silla Rota, only so far in 2022, more than 50 women have disappeared in Nuevo León. Although the violence in Mexico affects citizens in general – there are more than 74,000 missing men in the country – the cases in that state aroused unusual interest, in a country that added 3,751 murders of women in 2021 alone, of which 1,004 were classified as femicides.
There is generalized gender-based violence throughout the country that is combined with disappearances and organized crime
In addition, the cases of María Fernanda and Debanhi have patterns in common, shared with many others: the increasing disappearances, the violence against women, the indolence of the authorities and the little capacity to investigate in a country overwhelmed by crime.
Although the bodies of the women mentioned were found, the truth is that there are hundreds of families in the country who spend days, months and even years without knowing about their loved ones.
“For years there have been forced disappearances. That began in the area of the drug war (which was started more than a decade ago by former President Felipe Calderón). Now it has spread and there is generalized gender-based violence throughout the country that is combined with disappearances and organized crime. Among the 32 states in Mexico, 18 of them are on alert (for violence) of gender. It is a situation that is experienced at a macro level throughout the country,” Isabel Suárez, a lawyer specializing in gender issues from the civil organization Idheas, explained to this newspaper.
In addition to the violence, to which many are exposed in Mexico, when families go to the authorities to seek justice, they often find an overwhelmed system and a series of irregularities that delay the resolution of cases.
In the case of María Fernanda, for example, her family denounced the slow search. In fact, María José told EL TIEMPO that her cousin’s car was freely driven by the alleged aggressor days after the crime was committed until the vehicle was abandoned, according to several security cameras.
“This protocol (search), for me, is a real disaster, not to say shameful,” said Luis Carlos, María Fernanda’s father, in an interview with Televisa Monterrey days after their daughter was found.
Debanhi’s investigation also presented irregularities. The attorney general of Nuevo León, Gustavo Guerrero, dismissed two prosecutors for serious “omissions and errors” in the case. The removal occurred because the search groups searched the motel up to four times and did not find the body, which was located almost two weeks later inside a cistern on the site.
On the other hand, and according to these organizations for the search for the disappeared, families often face stigmatization from the authorities.
“We live in an insecure and violent context, and impunity continues in Mexico. In Nuevo León they minimize crimes. They insist that there are no disappearances and the authorities say that many (people) leave of their own free will. Others say that they leave with the boyfriend. In past administrations, a discourse was used that criminalizes and stigmatizes the victims. That minimizes the crimes, “Angélica Orozco, a member of the organization United Forces for Our Disappeared in Nuevo León (FUNDENL), explained to EL TIEMPO.
Given the lack of news of the disappeared in Mexico, there are innumerable organizations and groups promoted by relatives, who coordinate their own search brigades to try to follow the clues and find their loved ones, even if they are dead.
Many of them learn search methods and file appeals in court to defend their rights. Others also study excavation and extraction methods to, with their own hands, carry out the process of identifying human remains buried in graves.
“Although laws, protocols and identification mechanisms (for the disappeared) have been implemented, there is still a long way to go. It must be recognized that the authorities are overwhelmed. The institutions, due to more laws and protocols, are not going to be functional if there is no good budget and human resources,” said Yolanda Navarro, a member of the network of Links of Nuevo León, an organization dedicated to the search for the disappeared.
Despite the fact that Mexico has been dragging this scourge of violence for several years, the cases in Nuevo León of Debanhi and María Fernanda once again put the seriousness of these episodes on the public agenda and the need to thoroughly investigate what really happened to the victims. .
By the way, and as a result of these episodes, The Human Rights Commission (CNDH) of Mexico demanded a few weeks ago to prioritize the crisis of femicides and disappearances in the national agency.
“The gender violence experienced by girls and women in the country must be recognized as a priority on the national agenda, since it generates the most detestable expression such as femicides and also disappearances,” said the autonomous body in a position .
The commission considered “indispensable” the training of ministerial staff and police with a gender perspective and respect for protocols, and the coordination of government bodies to curb violence.
CARLOS JOSE REYES
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME
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