After the serenity of the Mass, the women huddled together under the tent, closing their eyes and sobbing. But the group mustered the strength for their rallying cry. “Colectivo Solecito, together!” cried Lucia de los Ángeles Díaz. “Hasta encontrarnos!”, the group yelled. (“Until we find them!”)
The Mass, held on Oct. 15 in the eastern state of Veracruz, was unlike any Mexico has seen in a long time. Scattered near the altar and the tent that provided shade against the scorching sun were dozens of wooden posts with small, white signs carrying a number and the word fosa, or “pit.”
The mass grave is a grim monument to the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared in the brutal drug war that has plagued the country for more than a decade.
There are some 150 of the pits in Colinas de Santa Fe, a large area of overgrown duneland near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. They mark the places where the remains of some 300 people have been excavated since 2015. Together they make perhaps the largest mass grave in Mexico, a grim monument to the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared and been murdered in the brutal drug war that has plagued the country for more than a decade.
Most of the women attending the Mass were members of the human rights group Colectivo Solecito. The group was founded in 2014 by dozens of women in Veracruz who had lost sons, brothers or other relatives.
This week the women of Colectivo Solecito were honored by the Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, for their tireless efforts to find their lost family members and their fight for justice in a country overwhelmed by violence committed with almost complete impunity.
On Monday, Father Jenkins co-officiated the Mass at Colinas de Santa Fe with Bishop Luis Felipe Gallardo of Veracruz. The next day, in Mexico City, he gave the women the annual Notre Dame Award, which recognizes human rights across the globe. The women of Colectivo Solecito are the first Mexican recipients of the award, which was earlier given to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and Mother Teresa.
“To see the power of women who band together, asking for truth about their children, really is special,” Father Jenkins told America after the Mass. “This was one of the earliest and one of the strongest groups of its kind in Mexico. In honoring them, I hope all these collectives feel like we’re honoring them as well.”
“To see the power of women who band together, asking for truth about their children, really is special.”
Colectivo Solecito is one of the largest of the search groups that have sprung up across Mexico as a response to the drug war. While tens of thousands of Mexicans have been murdered in gangland warfare, others have disappeared without a trace. Their families suspect criminal gangs, sometimes in collusion with corrupt police, but filing missing person reports have largely been in vain. State and federal authorities have been unwilling or unable to investigate the disappearances.
Lucia de los Ángeles Díaz founded Colectivo Solecito in 2014, the year after her son was abducted from his home and not seen again. After months of desperately searching morgues and hospitals, and fruitless attempts to get information from local authorities on the fate of her child, Díaz joined forces with almost 100 other women searching for loved ones.
Anonymous tips from residents of nearby neighborhoods drew the women to Colinas de Santa Fe, a piece of private land some 10 miles west of the port city of Veracruz where criminal gangs were said to bury their victims. The women acted as amateur forensic researchers, armed with shovels and metal rods that they pushed into the ground to locate smells that could indicate a buried body. After they started scouring the area in 2016, they located some 300 victims. The authorities and Colectivo Solecito now believe that most of the remains in the area have been excavated.
The women acted as amateur forensic researchers, armed with shovels and metal rods that they pushed into the ground to locate smells that could indicate a buried body.
“The search efforts and findings here have all been very well documented,” said Ms. de los Ángeles Díaz at the Mass held on Monday. “We don’t believe we’ll find much here anymore.”
“We were able to find some solace here, praying together,” Rosa Maria del Rosario López Durán told America, smiling through her tears. She is looking for her two sons Juan and Victor, who disappeared in 2014. The Mass was her first visit to Colinas de Santa Fe; she was worried the stress of visiting the place where her sons may have been buried would be too much for her frail health.
“I’ll never be able to move on until I know what happened to my children,” she said. “My family told me not to go. They thought it would take too much of a toll on me, but I’m happy I could listen to the words of Father Jenkins, to be here with the other women. I can go home now and tell my family that I feel better than I did yesterday.”
Other women also said they found a sense of closure here, amid the signs marking the graves where the largely still unidentified bodies were found, in addition to the banners behind the altar with photos of the missing family members.
Still, the work of the women is far from done. They recently received a tip about another possible mass grave, only a few miles from Colinas de Santa Fe, and plan to search the terrain in early November.
The women have a faint hope that the authorities may prove more helpful in the coming months, after Andrés Manuel López Obrador assumes the presidency on Dec. 1. The president-elect repeatedly told victims of violence during his campaign and in the months after his July 1 victory that he will end the impunity for gang-related violence.
Whether the new government is up for the task remains to be seen. The outgoing president, Enrique Peña Nieto, last year promulgated a Forced Disappearance Law, which allows for lengthy jail sentences for public officials convicted of involvement in forced disappearances, as well as the establishment of a National Search Commission.
“The National Search Commission might be there, but it’s hardly functional, and I don’t expect it to be in the near future,” a Veracruz-based federal human rights official told America on condition of anonymity.
The president-elect’s security policies are still lacking in detail, although he has repeatedly floated the idea of an amnesty for some linked to organized crime. The proposal has been controversial, and many families of the murdered and disappeared have voiced their discomfort with the idea, urging the incoming government to focus its effort on finding their loved ones first.
Father Jenkins agreed. During his trip to Mexico, he stressed the need for truth-seeking to achieve justice. “Unless the terrible actions that led to these deaths are brought into the light the process for forgiveness and reconciliation cannot be completed,” he told America. “So I think the work of this society, and this is what the mothers are saying, is to bring the truth into the light. Perhaps then we can talk about reconciliation and amnesty.”
