Mother’s Day is a sad reminder for the mothers of Mexico’s over 100,000 missing people

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hundreds of mothers of missing people, relatives and activists marched in protest through downtown Mexico City Friday to mark a sad commemoration of Mother's Day.

The marchers, angry over what they say is the government's lack of interest in investigating the disappearances of Mexico's over 100,000 missing people, chanted slogans like “Where are they, our children, where are they?” They carried massive banners that, in some cases, showed nearly 100 photos of missing people.

The Mother's Day march comes just days after officials managed to find the bodies of three foreigners less than a week after they went missing in Baja California state, while many Mexican mothers have been searching for the sons and daughters for years, and even decades.

“Because they are foreigners, those boys' country put the pressure on to look for them and they found them,” said Maria del Carmen Ayala Vargas, who has been looking for almost three years for any trace of her son, Iván Pastrana Ayala, who was abducted in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz in 2021.

Ayala Vargas doesn't begrudge the families of the two Australian men and one American man who at least got some closure when their bodies were found at the bottom of a well last week.

“We take no pleasure in other people's pain,” she said, but she wants the same kind of energetic search for all the missing.

“That's the way we want it done for everybody, equally,” she said. “It's real proof that when they (officials) want to do something, they can.”

Australian surfers Callum and Jake Robinson and American Jack Carter Rhoad were allegedly killed by car thieves in Baja California, across the border from San Diego, somewhere around April 28 or 29.

The killers dumped their bodies in an extremely remote well miles away, but authorities found them in about four days.

In contrast, in her son's case, Ayala Vargas said the government “has done absolutely nothing, they even lost our DNA samples” which relatives submit in hopes of identifying bodies.

But some mothers have been looking even longer.

Some of the anger Friday was directed at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose administration has spent far more time looking for people falsely listed as missing — who may have returned home without advising authorities — than in searching for grave sites that relatives say they desperately need for closure.

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