Breathe
By Linda Atach Zaga
I found my son Roberto three years after he went missing from me, on July 14, 2017. He was number 93 of the bodies recovered by "Las Buscadoras".
That day my hope of finding him alive died, but I also rested because I finally fulfilled my promise to find him. Since then I have been wearing the green T-shirt that I share with my colleagues who have also found theirs and that bears the legend
"Promise kept."
Mirna, mother belonging to Las Buscadoras
I decided to wait until after the Day of the Dead to write about siblings Dan Israel and Grace Mahogany Fernández Morán. I did so in order to make it clear that, in addition to implying the deepest of hells for the victims and those around them, disappearance cannot be compared to death. Not at all.
Irremediable in its essence, death is rest and consolation, the certainty of the end and the beginning of something. Thus and radically opposed to the first, disappearance is only limbo and uncertainty: the strange possibility of living without manifesting itself, in the face of a memory that debates between recognizing that the disappeared person lives and the belief that he or she has died.
Like most ordinary Mexicans - and aspirationalists - who want nothing more than to get ahead and live in peace, Dan and Grace lived a "normal" life until December 19, 2008, when the disappearance of their brother Dan Jeremeel brought their lives to a halt. Since then they have experienced the same pain that crumbles the existence of friends and relatives of the more than 112,000 people who have disappeared since the beginning of the war that the State declared against drug trafficking in 2006.
Like Grace and Dan Israel, the stories of the fathers, mothers, grandparents, activists, searchers, aunts, uncles and sons of the victims of enforced disappearance are similar, distinguished only by names, places and dates. Overflowing with frustration, the testimonies coincide in emotion and break down when they explain the inhumane, but at the same time necessary process involved in the search for people:
How to find and recognize among the earth and the remains of the clandestine graves the features of the one you have loved? What happens in a country where people pray to find a loved one alive, only to give up and wish for a dignified burial? With what humanity is life despised to the point of denying it its right to exist?
There is nothing more frustrating than questioning without being answered or crying and feeling like you want to die without being accompanied. For Dan Israel, his brother's disappearance meant loneliness and a sharp cut in the skin. Jeremeel was my example, my older brother, my husband and father of five children, and the one who taught me to be who I am, Dan tells me with the serious face of someone who, no matter how much he repeats what he says, continues to suffer.
Despite being an activist who continues the work of those who demanded the Criminalization of Disappearance and who fought for the General Law on the Forced Disappearance of Persons, Dan regrets that in this country the first alternative is to deny the lack of so many and that the slaughter of more than 200,000 people in the last six years continues without respite.
Grace speaks even louder: her complaints are direct and perhaps even more sensitive. She sticks to the emotional aspect, that of the mother who withers waiting for the son who left at 34 and who today turns 50. She also denounces the fact that they want to erase the names and memories of the disappeared. He also condemns the fact that the forensic teams are so insufficient in the face of the size of the tragedy: the State owes us a debt of justice. It is unbelievable that people continue to evaporate without any explanation other than the vain words issued by the authorities before changing the subject and getting out of the way, with more than 50,000 unidentified corpses still to be found.
Thinking about the eradication of forced disappearance in today's Mexico requires political will and actions that today still seem distant. As long as we do not understand that impunity is the mother of evil, things will continue as they have been or worse. It is time to open our eyes.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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