MEXICO- One of the cases of disappearance that has had the most impact this year in the Warrior status It is that of the girl of the Me’phaa Bathaa ethnic group Esmeralda Genaro Camilo, 7 and a half years old, last January, in the region known as The Mountainthe poorest in the country.
The minor had some health problems to take care of herself and the last time the family saw her was last January at home, when she got out of bed, where she had remained motionless, looking at the ceiling.
He walked to the kitchen and stood in the doorway. She didn’t know how to speak. Her mother saw her dressed in a red Minnie-print blouse and pants of the same color and she continued doing her thing: the food, the dishes, the clothes hanging in the yard. All her duties entertained her for a while. Shortly after, her daughter was missing.
“The owl sang as a bad omen,” remembers the mother.
Esmeralda thus joined the list of disappearances in this country that has an even blacker hole in the darkness: that of the group people who never officially existed because they did not have a birth certificate.
Their parents, monolingual indigenous people, did not believe it was necessary to present them to the civil registry or they did not want to deal with Spanish or out of ignorance.
They didn’t know that one day they would need it, according to the study Invisible until deathof the “Tlalchinollan” Mountain Human Rights Center, until the violence for control of territory reached them in many ways. Murders, collection of fees, extortions and the cherry on the cake of misfortunes: disappearances, a wound that never heals.
How to search for someone who is not in the civil registry? There is no date or place of birth, name. It is not known who his parents are, they do not have any identity documents…
Tlalchinollan took on the task of giving them names and surnames to, at least, have an unofficial basis. In a count that he carried out, based on complaints on social networks and from families, he managed to locate 45 missing people, of these 16 are women and girls, from the municipalities of Zapotitlán Tablas, (with 28 cases); Acatepec, 6; Cochoapa el Grande, 6; Olinalá, 2; Metlatónoc, Huamuxtitlán and Tlalixtaquilla were one respectively.
“The numbers of missing people are higher, but it is not known exactly because they fear for their lives when they report and search for their loved ones,” explained Vidulfo Rosales, lawyer for the organization.
SEARCH WITHOUT FRUITS
Violence in the state is still present. In 2022, 1,097 murders were recorded, an average of three a day; The previous year there was 1 and during the first 10 days of 2023, the date Esmeralda disappeared, more than 20 murders had been documented.
In Guerrero, which has a population of 3.5 million inhabitants (a fifth of Mexico City), they operate 16 criminal groups who do not give truce in the midst of impunity, according to a report by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, where the vulnerability of gender in this type of States stands out.
“There is no investigation, there is a lack of information and monitoring, search protocols, deficiencies in forensic practices, prejudices against women and attacks against those who report, human rights defenders and journalists,” he details.
Tlalchinollan stands out in the disappearance of girls and adolescents, in addition to organized crime, sexist violence in their homes and communities stands out.
“In Tlapa there are people who hire organized crime groups to murder and disappear people, for example, in the case of Atlamajac the grandmother, daughter and granddaughter disappeared,” Rosales recalled.
They were people without a birth certificate, like Esmeralda, Yazmín Hernández Peral, 15 years old, in the community of Tecoyame de Guadalupe, municipality of Tlalixtaquilla de Maldonado, disappeared on January 15; Itzel de la Luz Silva González, 20 years old, from the community of Alcozauca, disappeared on December 16, 2022; Silvia Abelina Navarrete Soriano, 58 years old, originally from Axoxuca, municipality of Tlapa.
The search by Catalina, Esmeralda’s mother, began under the bed, in the corners of the house, she went out to the patio, looked at the hill and turned more than 20 times, but she did not find her. She felt afraid, but the hope of finding the whereabouts of her daughter was a few steps away, in the house of the community commissioner, Don Daniel Barrera, who quickly looked for her, but there was nothing.
Don José Faustino, Esmeralda’s father, went to look for the communities from Juanacatlán to San Juan Puerto Montaña, and notify the community authorities so that they could announce through a horn to the inhabitants if he saw his daughter and provide him with information. She returned to her house at 10 p.m. without news.
It was not until 11 at night that he arrived in Tlapa to notify the municipal police that his daughter “had been lost.” The municipal authorities took note, but did not mobilize.
The searches for Doña Catalina, along with her two daughters, desperately continued in the ravines, hills and neighbors’ houses. It was around one in the morning when they decided to stop because they were afraid to continue.
The next day, they traveled to Tlapa to ask for help on Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center to file a complaint with the public ministry. “Only in this way did it become known that an invisible girl had disappeared,” adds the organization. “But they generally remain uncounted as victims of disappearance.”
On Saturday, January 14 and Sunday, January 15, the state police went to the community of Santa María Tonaya, but could not carry out searches because it was night. The police then distributed leaflets in the main streets of Tlapa. On January 25th the State Attorney General’s Office issued the Amber Alert to locate Esmeralda, describing her with personal data. The regional prosecutor’s office has carried out two searches, one on January 31 and another on February 2 without success.
There is no trace of the girl, but at least it is known that she existed unofficially.
FEATURED FIGURE
He 0.36% of Mexicans do not have a birth certificatewhich is equivalent to 451,855 people, while 0.15% (just over 200,000) declared that they did not know if they were registered in the civil registry.
Source: INEGI.
Keep reading:
–Eliminate registration from the registry in each election, the last stone in the shoe of the migrant vote?
–Water in Mexico, life or economic prosperity?
–“My ranch is divided between those who are with the cartel and the victims”