In Mexico’s election, candidates grapple with the search for the missing
Al Jazeera
With voters set to choose a new president, the families of the disappeared reflect on the legacy of outgoing leader Lopez Obrador.
Mexico City, Mexico – Mother’s Day on Friday was a sombre occasion for Joanna Alvear of Toluca, Mexico.
She began her day with hundreds of other women in the shadow of the towering Mother’s Monument, a stone obelisk in the centre of Mexico City.
Most of the women wore the same grim expression: furrowed brows, tightly clenched jaws and piercing eyes, some brimming with tears. Like many of them, Alvear clutched a homemade poster to her chest, its cheery yellow colour belying its heart-breaking plea: “I’m still searching for you. Lilith, I love you.”
She represents one of the estimated 111,000 missing persons in Mexico today.
Every year on Mother’s Day, the families of the “disappeared” join with activists and concerned citizens to march through the streets of the capital, demanding answers in the tens of thousands of unsolved cases.
