By Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán |
New York (EFE).- The Mexican María Herrera Magdaleno, chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 people of last year, hopes that this recognition that brought her to New York on Wednesday night, will serve to be heard ” the cry of pain” and that “this cruel situation” is known that, like her, other families live whose children are among the thousands of disappeared in that country.
“The first thing that went through my mind (when he found out about his election by Time) was the possibility of conveying this cry of pain that we are experiencing in Mexico, so cruel that we can call it against humanity. That your children are taken from you in this way, it should not be”, indicated this mother of eight children, of whom four disappeared in 2008 and 2010, according to her the work of organized crime and as a result of impunity in the Government.
The Mexican, who is leading a fight to locate not only her children, but to find those of other families, spoke with EFE in New York about these efforts and also pointed out that after the recognition she hopes to gain support so that “someone can put pressure on our Government to attend to us, listen to us and resolve” the problem of organized crime, to which he attributes most of the disappearances.
They dig graves without government support
According to Herrera, the families of the disappeared have not had the support of the Mexican authorities and it is the relatives who are looking for them by digging in various places throughout the country where they have found remains that have not been able to be identified.
His sons Jesús and Raúl Trujillo traveled on August 28, 2008 along with five co-workers -all between the ages of 19 and 27- from Michoacán to Guerrero to manage a purchase and sale of metals. The same night they went to a bar in a municipality in Guerrero and that is the last thing that was heard from the group.
Two years later, in September 2010, Luis Armando and Gustavo disappeared, leaving for the state of Veracruz -despite the refusal and fear of the mother- for business management, as the family needed money to continue the search. of the brothers, but they never reached their destination, recalled the mother, who says she relies on her faith to keep going.
“My first intention was to let myself die, I could not resign myself to living without my four children. I believe that strength came to me from above, from infinity, from my God, and I decided to go out and continue searching,” recalled Herrera, a short woman with a soft voice who breaks when talking about her children, unable to avoid looking at her. they fill with tears.
Herrera joined other parents and created the “Family in Search” network, already made up of some 190 groups, who want to be factors of change in society “because what hurts the most is having to leave this inhuman, cruel Mexico to our loved ones who come after us, to future generations.
According to the activist, the network operates in 26 states where they do the work “that the State should be doing because it is the Government that is causing our loved ones to disappear. They have the obligation but they have not complied with it”.
Cops want to silence her
He recalled that in 2013 they tried to take his son Miguel Ángel, which also happened with his other son Juan Carlos in 2018. He assures that it was corrupt police officers and that it is a form of threat for his activism.
“The threats are still standing. With that they wanted to tell me ‘put it down, shut up’ but they won’t succeed because every time this happens to me, I scream louder”, because they want the world to find out “what we are living through”, he affirmed.
“They continue to do this, and not only with my children. That is why I say that it is not organized crime, it is institutionalized crime and the fact that they have Genaro García Luna (former Mexican Secretary of Security) here gives me strength to continue saying that it is the same corrupt state that has us in this situation. ”, he pointed out while holding the photos of his disappeared children and of the journalist Javier Valdez, who wrote about drug trafficking and was assassinated in May 2017.
Last November, Herrera filed a lawsuit against the Mexican government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Washington with the help of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, which he says has taken him by the hand in his search for justice.