Pamela Cerdeira

Two people, a hundred meters of tarpaulin, a hundred thousand missing

Eighty kilos of tarpaulin: one hundred meters long, four meters wide; two people, climbing equipment and more than 16 hours to begin to unfold a message that would have to shake the world.

Five fire engines, four ambulances, a civil protection van, a couple of patrol cars. One hundred and four meters of a monument to impunity that marks the six-year period of a war that no one was asked if they wanted to fight. Who would have thought that that massacre, which was justified by saying that it sought to protect our children from drugs, would end up sending them in pieces to clandestine graves.

Eighty kilos of canvas: one hundred meters long, four meters wide; two people: a man and a woman; climbing equipment and more than 16 hours to begin to unfold a message that would have to shake the world.

Is it twenty women? Is it forty? They are those who are here, plus those who are missing. They are also those who could not come, and those who will be. There is something in their eyes that has not been seen in the media in the last two weeks, it is what the deputies and senators do not have, nor the very long speeches and excuses to defend militarization, it is the dignity of those who have had everything taken from them and are still standing.

Hasta Encontrarte is the name of the collective of searchers from Guanajuato that kept our eyes on the sky. Never before had the Estela de Luz been observed with so much emotion. Viviana, its spokeswoman, talks to the media, she has been doing it since 6 in the morning, neither the hours, the cold or the tiredness modify her speech, she answers kindly, as if it was the first time she was asked. She also searches, but she does not tell her story, she talks about all of them, about the presence of the military, about an investigation file that has been stalled for three years, about the victims of a failed security strategy.

I talk to another of the women, she has already found her daughter. I don't dare ask her how. "It's been three years since I found her, but I promised not to leave the movement. Yes, I found her, they gave me her remains."

What happened yesterday was powerful and moving, it was the biggest "viva" among so much death. It was the demonstration of how you can make yourself heard in a country where no one listens.

Finally, after 17 hours of waiting, the first centimeters of the hung tarp are visible. The women join together in a circle, hold hands and an Our Father is heard. The slogans follow, "While you are celebrating, a mother is crying." They tell the truth, only six kilometers away there is a great celebration, that of the heroes who are not here, of the dreams of others and the empty promises. In the Zócalo the tigers of the north sound, but the cries of these women are more powerful because they will continue to sound long after the celebration is over.