Quintana Roo’s Missing Persons Crisis Deepens

QUINTANA ROO, Mexico — To the thousands of persons who have disappeared in Quintana Roo over the last decades, day after day, many more cases are added. Some are located alive and reintegrated into their family environments, but many others have not been so fortunate. Their families search for them across the breadth of Quintana Roo and other states in the country, while the authorities constitutionally obligated to search for them simulate or only partially fulfill their duties.

In a previous installment of this column, the humanitarian crisis in the south of Quintana Roo due to the disappearance of persons was discussed. However, the more one investigates, the more the cases increase. The stories of terror experienced by families searching for their loved ones are something no one should have to live through in a country that calls itself democratic.

For example, in just the first 11 days of September, out of the more than 40 search bulletins issued and published by the Attorney General's Office of Quintana Roo through the Missing Persons platforms—noting that a dark figure of persons who are never reported as missing also exists—the status of at least 33 persons remained "not located" as of the 11th, and two persons were found deceased.

In some cases, the disappearances were registered in the final days of August, though the majority occurred in September. All cases were reported to police within the month, prompting the Attorney General's Office to issue the corresponding search bulletins.

Girls, boys, adolescents, youth, adults, and the elderly are all on the list of persons who have not been located, primarily in the municipalities of Othón P. Blanco, which contains the state capital Chetumal; Benito Juárez; Tulum; José María Morelos; and Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

A recount conducted for this journalistic space found that of at least two dozen persons reported missing in Othón P. Blanco, 11 remain unlocated and one was found deceased.

In the municipality of Benito Juárez, home to the tourist center of Cancún, 15 persons remain reported as not located and one was found deceased.

In José María Morelos, two persons remain unlocated; in Tulum, three; and in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, one. In these three municipalities, more than 12 persons reported as not located were found alive and reintegrated with their families days after the search bulletins were issued.

Of the 35 unlocated persons, nine are minors—four women and five men. Two women and 24 men are adults.

The Quintana Roo Attorney General's Office also issued a search bulletin to locate a man residing in Cancún who was reported missing in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

On September 10, the Jalisco Commission for Searching for Persons issued a search bulletin for Rodrigo Vázquez Coutiño, an independent former candidate for municipal president of Cancún. He was deprived of his liberty on August 27 while in the city of Guadalajara, where he had gone to celebrate his 43rd birthday and participate in various cultural activities.

According to information recently disseminated by family and friends, on the afternoon of August 27, while at an art gallery, he was deprived of his liberty by an armed group that also took visual artist Frany Arteaga and lawyer Gustavo Torres.

Relatives and friends have sent an open letter to public officials at all three levels of government, asking them to conduct a serious investigation to determine the whereabouts of Rodrigo Vázquez Coutiño, as well as the other persons who were kidnapped.

The disappearance of persons in Quintana Roo can no longer be an issue where the Attorney General's Office merely fulfills its duty by issuing search bulletins with the information provided by relatives at the time they report a person missing. What is required is for the facts to be investigated, for case files to be compiled in a professional and scientific manner; otherwise, it is merely simulation.

Something is happening in Quintana Roo that the authorities do not want to see, and if they have detected it and are not acting accordingly, they are acting in complicity.

To date, there is no explanation from the Quintana Roo authorities regarding the fact that five workers originally from Nayarit disappeared violently in Chetumal after an armed group broke into the Hotel Luna Caribe, where they were staying, on September 3.

Reports from the Attorney General's Office indicate the events occurred when the victims, identified as Alexis Augusto Ibarra Cornejo, 20; Jack Iván Barra Mendoza, 45; Juan Antonio Ríos Quiroz, 40; Veiko de Jesús Ruíz Verdín, 29; and César Augusto Ahumada Montes, 43, were deprived of their liberty by armed men who entered the hotel where they were staying.

Relatives of these five men requested that an organization of searching mothers in Quintana Roo intervene with the authorities while they manage to travel to Quintana Roo to search directly and work jointly with officials.

While the municipal presidents of Quintana Roo spend municipal budgets on their so-called government reports and present themselves as superstars of the spectacle, hundreds of families are searching with their own nails for their loved ones.