Cancun, Quintana Roo — Family and friends of Diana Garcia gathered across Cancun on July 23 to post missing person flyers marking what would have been her 27th birthday, a symbolic act in the ongoing search for the young woman who disappeared more than six years ago.
Romana Rivera Ramirez, Garcia’s mother and founder of the collective “Truth, Memory and Justice,” said the group posted alerts for several missing people, but specifically in memory of her daughter and Jorge Armando Kiau. “I requested that this flyer be more specific to Diana, but we are carrying other alerts,” she said.
Rivera said the collective continues to work with the State Search Commission to locate the missing. She noted that she has requested a second meeting with written demands to take action for the remainder of the year, including targeted searches in each municipality.
One of the main challenges, she stressed, is following up on missing person cases, especially in the Maya Zone, where many families and communities fear intimidation and refuse to report or pursue cases.
“We have many active alerts, but we also have people known to be missing who are not being reported, most of them young people,” she said.
Rivera said the collective has a record of 160 active missing person cases and has located 25 victims so far.
Diana Garcia Rivera and Jorge Armando Kiau were last seen on February 22, 2020, at a nightclub in the Infinity plaza in Cancun. According to police reports, a group of people entered the establishment and forcibly took the young people. Their families have had no contact with them since, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
One suspect is awaiting trial, and another, Jose Luis Fonseca, a former ministerial police officer with the State Prosecutor’s Office, was sentenced to 87 years and six months in prison. Despite the conviction, Garcia’s case remains unsolved.
Rivera has expressed pain and frustration over the lack of progress in the investigation and has called on authorities to act more quickly and effectively in searching for the missing. She hopes events like this will mobilize more people and generate new leads.
The case of Diana and Jorge is one of many disappearances in Quintana Roo, where human rights organizations have pointed to a lack of progress in investigations.
