Physical anthropologist and criminologist Juan Carlos Tercero is an expert in investigating the murders of victims who've been concealed underwater. He traveled his native Mexico giving talks on the recovery of human remains. Then, just as he was set to join Nayarit state's commission for locating missing people, he, too, disappeared. It's now been four months since Tercero was last seen leaving his Tepic home and onlookers fear he was targeted for his work, along with at least six mothers of missing people who've turned up dead since 2021, per the Guardian. Facing what they say is government inaction, relatives of Mexico's missing people have taken up the mantle, uncovering graves in an effort to bring their loved ones' killers to justice. But many of them have been targeted.
"If the people who are doing the searching are disappearing, imagine the fear for mothers or other groups dedicated to the search," says Marisol Madero, a criminologist and friend of Tercero who is acting as a spokesperson for his family, per the Guardian. Madero says the state prosecutor's office, which oversees the commission Tercero was joining, appears unconcerned by the disappearance of one of "their own." "We would have thought that we were going to be met with support, concern, with concrete actions ... Instead, we've found just the opposite," says Madero. The prosecutor's office has even refused to issue Tercero's family a copy of his case file as legally required, Madero claims. Experts say that's unsurprising.
There are more than 110,000 people missing in Mexico, according to the National Search Commission, though that's "likely an undercount due to lack of reporting, distrust in authorities, and endemic impunity," per the AP. Last year, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances found "states parties are directly responsible for enforced disappearances committed by public officials, but may also be accountable for disappearances committed by criminal organizations." Karla Quintana, head of the National Search Commission, resigned last week while urging the government to "continue to push for a comprehensive policy geared toward prevention, searching and fighting impunity," per the AP. Human rights groups view it as a worrying sign.
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Quintana and her team "put a previously languishing state institution on its feet," shining a light on the "crisis of disappearances while facing resistance from prosecutors," said the Center for Human Rights Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez, per the AP. It added steps taken by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador would "reverse advances" in the effort to locate the missing and bring perpetrators to justice. Tercero is one of more than 100 people reported missing in Nayarit state this year. The prosecutor's office initially said he may have disappeared due to "personal matters." However, Tercero's partner told reporters in April, "he is missing because they disappeared him, not because he wanted to disappear." (More Mexico stories.)
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