On the morning of September 15, while preparations were being finalized across the country to commemorate the 215th anniversary of the beginning of Independence, in Culiacán the demand for justice took precedence over the celebration.
Members of the Sabuesos Guerreras A.C. collective demonstrated in front of the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in a protest they called “Blood of my Blood,” in which they remembered the more than six thousand missing people in Sinaloa through collective weaving.
The event, laden with symbolism, coincided with the anniversary of the internal conflict between the Los Chapitos and Los Mayos factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which marked one year on September 9. According to search groups, the violence linked to this dispute has already left more than two thousand missing people in the state.
The gates of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary were covered with photographs of the disappeared and a red mesh woven in 14 states, a symbol of the blood shed by thousands of victims.
On that stage, the members of the collective sang the National Anthem and performed a roll call of those missing. “Son, listen, your mother is in the fight,” they shouted in unison, making their demand for justice resonate in the heart of the historic center.
“This performance represents the blood shed by so much violence. All we want is for people to see all the barbarity that has been committed this year, when we have been through everything: murders, robberies, burglaries, car thefts. And well, all we want is precisely that, to make the disappearances and murders visible,” María Isabel Cruz Bernal, leader of the collective, stated in an interview with Espejo Magazine, explaining that the protest was a cry of pain and faith.
At the demonstration, the searching mothers replaced the traditional patriotic cry with a different kind of cry: “Long live our disappeared,” “Long live the searching mothers,” “Because they took them alive, we want them alive.”
At the center of the protest, they placed a red dot surrounded by candles, petals, and flowers, as a symbol of memory and resistance. “We can’t shout Viva México because we are facing endless violence, and I think it’s not a cry for celebration,” said María Isabel.
She also celebrated Governor Rubén Rocha Moya’s decision to cancel the patriotic celebrations. “We celebrate precisely that he has shown solidarity after placing 6,000 candles on that government square where he represents all the violence,” added the searching mother.
The violence in the state has forced the Sabuesos Guerreras A.C. collective to suspend its field work for the past six months, despite receiving reports of possible clandestine graves in the region.
According to the newspaper Noroeste, its leader, María Isabel Cruz Bernal, acknowledged that the authorities’ attempts at support are insufficient to guarantee the safety of the searching mothers.
“They accompany us halfway, that is, one patrol car and one or two people go. So, I think it’s quite a lot, for about six months now. We haven’t conducted [searches] for safety reasons,” Cruz Bernal explained.
The collective has identified at least 35 locations where buried bodies could be located, but the presence of criminal groups in those areas prevents them from carrying out the investigations.
“We have about 35 locations where there could be buried people, but we can’t go there because they are areas where criminals operate and where we would put ourselves at risk,” the activist noted, who asked Governor Rubén Rocha Moya to integrate the search commissioner into the security committee to arrange for protection conditions for these efforts.
Source: infobae
