Families of missing Mexicans take over a prominent space in Mexico City

[Judi Lynn]

NPR
Published May 27, 2023 at 4:35 PM CDT

ERIC DEGGANS, HOST:

There's a roundabout in the middle of a prominent boulevard in Mexico City. It used to be called (speaking Spanish), the roundabout of the palm. And that's because a majestic palm tree stood there for more than a century, but it died last year. That's when families of missing Mexicans decided to occupy the space with pictures of their loved ones. A tussle ensued, full of symbolism and mysticism. Here's NPR's Eyder Peralta.

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EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: I meet Jorge Verastegui Gonzalez at a cafe not far from the traffic circle. His brother and his nephew disappeared in January of 2009. So he says when he heard that the palm had died, it felt like an opportunity.

JORGE VERASTEGUI GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) The government constantly wants to hide their faces, so we wanted a reminder in the most important street in the country.

PERALTA: Within days, families hung a tarp with about 300 pictures of their missing relatives. But by the next morning they were all gone.

GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

PERALTA: The families, he said, took it as yet another disappearance.

GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) It was also a symbolic act, because they used the same tactics that the criminals use to disappear our families.

PERALTA: It was the same way his brother and nephew went missing. Verastegui says men wearing hoods took them at night. Neighbors saw it. They called the family. The family called the police.

GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) But the police never bothered to search for them.

PERALTA: A police chief, he says, told them a cartel beat them up, but that they were alive. Verastegui says those words, beat up but alive, have haunted him for 14 years. Part of him accepts that they're dead.

GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) But then there's always that hope.

PERALTA: That uncertainty, he says, becomes a form of torture. But it's also why they can't give up on this traffic circle.

More:
https://www.kmuw.org/2023-05-27/families-of-missing-mexicans-take-over-a-prominent-space-in-mexico-city