On the morning of June 11, opening day of the World Cup, Mexico City seemed busier than usual. Fans wearing Mexico team jerseys blasted their vuvuzelas and paraded through the streets waving flags. But, amid the festivities, other images took over the city: posters with photos of missing persons, graffiti, and banners carried by family members who are not willing to let soccer overshadow the country’s humanitarian crisis.
Mothers, fathers, siblings, and spouses took advantage of the attention surrounding the 2026 World Cup—hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico—to raise awareness about an issue they’ve been fighting for two decades: more than 133,000 people remain missing in the country, according to official data.
The demonstrations did not begin with the World Cup. Days earlier, groups of Madres Buscadoras (“searching mothers”) were already dominating headlines. On the eve of the opening ceremony, they organized a funeral march around Azteca Stadium—an image that broke through soccer euphoria and appeared on screens around the world.
On the day of the inauguration, these groups shared the streets with teachers, retirees, healthcare workers, and farmers, each with their own demands. Among the crowd, the voices of the relatives of the disappeared rang out the loudest. “Why are we looking for them? Because we love them! How long will we keep looking for them? Until we find them!” Hours later, fans celebrated on Paseo de la Reforma amid a torrential downpour. A giant screen had been set up between the Angel of Independence and the Glorieta de la Palma, renamed “Glorieta de los Desaparecidos” (Roundabout of the Disappeared) by grassroots movements. Both monuments were covered with photos and names. At the center, the celebration. Around it, the faces of those who are gone.
Gabriela Alonso, 42, was one of the protesters. Two years ago, she started the Colectivo Luciérnagas Buscadoras, which supports families of missing persons in Mexico City and states like the State of Mexico, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Veracruz. Alonso held a sign with a photo of her brother, Yudhistira Piña Villarruel, 27, who went missing on September 30, 2024, in the Gustavo A. Madero neighborhood in Mexico City. He had been offered a job selling land through Facebook groups—a common tactic used by criminal groups to lure vulnerable young people. In the days following his disappearance, he stopped answering calls and began messaging friends asking for money, saying his life was in danger. 15 days later, his family found his body in a medical examiner’s office in the State of Mexico. “We couldn’t even say goodbye to him,” says Alonso. To date, investigators cannot explain what happened between his disappearance and death.
For Alonso, her brother’s case is part of a pattern. “It doesn’t happen to just anyone. It always happens to the same people: the poorest, the most marginalized, the young people living on the outskirts. Organized crime takes them because it can, because they know they’ll get away with it,” she says.
A Government Without Data
According to a 2025 report by Amnesty International, Mexico had a total of 133,500 missing and unaccounted-for persons as of December that year—a 10.5 percent increase from 2024. The organization also noted that 88 percent of reported disappearances since 1950 occurred between 2006 and 2024, which coincides with the militarization of public security in the country.
Data from the National Registry of Missing and Unaccounted-For Persons (Registro Nacional de Personas Desaparecidas y No Localizadas, RNPDNO), an official database maintained by the National Search Commission (Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda, CNB) of the Ministry of the Interior, shows that 78 percent of missing persons are men, mainly between the ages of 30 and 59, and 22 percent are women, mainly between 18 and 29. The motives behind the cases, however, are not listed in official records.
For Rita Balderas, researcher and professor at UNAM, this gap is intentional. “The government provides us with very opaque data to avoid causing a national scandal. What they’re doing is ‘kicking the can down the road’—shirking responsibility by passing the problem on to another entity so they don’t have to deal with it,” she says.
It’s families—mostly mothers—who are searching for the disappeared.
In the absence of public data, Balderas conducted a study using a representative sample across the country. She spent nine months collecting 801 testimonies from relatives of missing persons. The picture they painted was consistent: it’s families—mostly mothers—who are searching for the disappeared. Nine out of ten do so alone, while facing social stigma and being revictimized by the government.
The study’s data reveal that the crisis goes beyond the official narrative. Half the cases are linked to organized crime. Balderas distinguishes between voluntary—when people join criminal groups—and forced disappearances. “Drug trafficking is an industry—and not just one of hitmen or illicit activities. They also need people to clean their homes and perform other types of services,” she explains.
According to her study, another 40 percent of cases are linked to gender-based violence. Four out of every ten victims go missing and are later found dead, making femicides a key factor in disappearance statistics. The third factor, accounting for the remaining 10 percent, is one of the least publicly discussed: domestic violence. The study shows that young people between 14 and 20 leave their homes to escape domestic abuse, but their families report them as missing nonetheless.
Disappearing People: A Craft That Is Being Perfected
Many of the disappearances follow a pattern that has become a systematic practice, according to Balderas. Those responsible know the blind spots in cities, which cameras aren’t working, and act when prosecutors’ offices are closed. In many cases, victims disappear on Thursdays—before the weekend, when investigative agencies aren’t open. “Disappearances have become a profession,” says Balderas.
Liliana Meza, of the Luz de Esperanza Desaparecidos Jalisco Collective—one of the most active and influential in the country, with more than 500 members—experienced this firsthand. On the night of October 22, 2020, an armed group stormed her home in Guadalajara, identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Without explanation, they took her eldest son, 18-year-old Carlos Maximiliano. When Meza attempted to stop them, they pointed a gun at her head. The arrest warrant they claimed to have never existed. Five and a half years later, Carlos Maximiliano is still missing—and the footage that could have proven his abduction was erased, as is often the case in similar situations.
The most common mechanism behind the disappearances is forced recruitment. Victims come from diverse backgrounds, but in most cases they are young men with no ties to crime. According to the collective’s co-founder, the fate of these people is disturbing. Some are sent to battles among rival factions and to drug labs, but many are forced to work on farms or as domestic workers—forms of modern slavery. Control is maintained through terror: victims are taken to isolated mountain camps strategically located on state borders. When authorities in one state approach, the groups cross into a neighboring state where that jurisdiction has no reach.
Prosecutors: Inefficiency, Corruption, and Collusion
In the first year of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, the State of Mexico and Mexico City recorded the highest number of new disappearances in the country: 2,011 and 1,915 cases, respectively, according to the RNPDNO. In March of last year, Sheinbaum presented a “Declaration on Missing Persons” that was harshly criticized by 158 groups of relatives, who accused her of demonstrating “a profound lack of understanding of the phenomenon” and of having excluded the victims from its drafting. The problem, however, continues to grow—and there do not appear to be concrete actions to address it.
In Mexico, most investigations into disappearances fall under each state’s Attorney General’s Office or Public Prosecutor’s Office. However, these institutions lack resources, capabilities, or sufficient staff. The specialized units for locating missing persons are also failing to fulfill their role. The situation is so dire that Mexico’s Federal Attorney General, Ernestina Godoy, publicly acknowledged that these institutions are not effective and need strengthening. In April 2026, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances went further: it stated that in some cases, disappearances occur with the direct involvement of public officials and, in others, with their authorization or acquiescence.
The situation is so dire that Mexico’s Federal Attorney General, Ernestina Godoy, publicly acknowledged that these institutions are not effective and need strengthening.
Bureaucracy and a lack of coordination between states slow down investigations even further. Alonso’s brother’s case illustrates this: he lived in Mexico City but disappeared in the State of Mexico, and neither government made progress on his case. When authorities identified the issue, they told Alonso that they needed to file a coordination request, which would take over 15 days. To this day, the case has not moved forward. “That lack of coordination can mean the difference between life and death for a missing person. They should be our allies, not an obstacle,” Alonso laments.
Most of the Madres Buscadores contacted for this article say they are more afraid of the authorities than of the criminals themselves—and many reported threats and attempted extortion while trying to search for their relatives. One of them is Alonso. She and her brother’s father requested protection from the State of Mexico’s Prosecutor’s Office—and to this day, they have not received a response. “I started receiving messages from someone who claimed to have my brother’s cell phone and wanted to ‘collect.’ The threat was clear: if they didn’t pay, the same thing would happen to the family. Then came the extortion: ‘I know what happened to him—give me money and I’ll tell you,’” she recounts. Both had to move and change their phone numbers.
In this climate of threats and institutional neglect, families have taken on the role of the state. “The Madres Buscadoras know how to look for the disappeared better than the prosecutors’ offices themselves, which end up playing little more than an observational role,” says Balderas. For her, what is at stake goes beyond each individual case: “How can you fight something if the authorities don’t recognize it as a problem? The Madres Buscadoras ensure that the disappeared are not forgotten. If they disappear, it would be a double disappearance: physical and public,” she warns.
Small Steps Forward
It was precisely this constant pressure—from street protests and media coverage—that began to force changes. In Jalisco, the state with the highest number of missing persons, the Luz de Esperanza Collective was the first to achieve concrete progress. The most significant was the approval of the “Searching Families, Priority Families” law by the state legislature—the first of its kind in the country and in Latin America—in November 2025. The law recognizes the families of the disappeared as a high-priority group, and guarantees access to education, health care, and social welfare programs.
It was precisely this constant pressure—from street protests and media coverage—that began to force changes.
In 2024, the case of Carlos Maximiliano, son of Liliana Meza, became the first in Jalisco to be recognized as a forced disappearance by a federal judge, setting a legal precedent for similar cases. There was also a shift in the stance of the Jalisco state government. In December 2024, Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro openly acknowledged the severity of the crisis, established working groups, and allowed activist groups to participate in selecting the heads of search institutions.
Balderas says that state prosecutor’s offices must be reformed. “The judicial system is deeply damaged by inefficiency, corruption, and collusion, and that has to change,” she argues. For Alonso, the solution requires a more radical transformation. “We need to demilitarize the country and create a transitional justice policy—one that offers a real way out for young people who are involved in criminal groups. It is possible to rebuild a country whose social fabric has been so shattered, but that requires political will,” she says. Until that will emerges, her strength comes another place: “Our struggle depends on the authorities because they have the resources and the tools, but I find strength in the community, in the organization of families.”
Liliana Meza, who has been searching for her son for five and a half years, has not given up hope. “I am certain that this struggle will yield results, and that this terrible period we have endured for decades will, at some point, be consigned to our country’s history books,” she concludes.
Editor’s Note: The Federal Secretariat of Public Security, the Mexico City Secretariat of Public Security, the Jalisco Secretariat of Public Security, and the National Human Rights Commission did not respond to interview requests. The Jalisco Commission for the Search for Missing Persons declined to grant an interview.
Augusta Lunardi is a Brazilian multimedia journalist based in Brasília. Her work has been published in France 24 and other French broadcasters (TF1, Arte, France 24), Brazilian outlets like Agência Pública, and Piauí, and Reuters. She covers human rights and institutional crises in Latin America, writing on the Penha massacre in Rio de Janeiro (2025) and the U.S. energy blockade in Cuba (2026).