Families confront Mexico City’s disappearance crisis, denouncing official inaction
Officials from the Mexico State prosecutor’s office cordon off an area where a human bone fragment was found during the Xalatlaco-Ajusco Metropolitan Search Brigade, March 4, 2025. Image credit: Madeleine Wattenbarger.
In June 2022, Guillermo Torres Peña went out to search for his brother, John Adán, who disappeared several months before in Santiago Tianguistenco, Mexico State. On a wooded slope of the Ajusco Hill, Guillermo found a cadaver. Some two and a half years later, it was identified as Leonardo Sandoval Cazares, a 21-year-old from Mexico City.
Families of victims count about 5,000 disappeared people in the capital, amidst a crisis of some 100,000 missing nationwide. They identify the Ajusco Hill, which sits on the city’s southwestern border with Mexico State and Morelos, as a hotspot for dumping bodies. As authorities fail to fulfill their obligations in searching for the disappeared, relatives of victims have taken the search into their own hands.
Last week, Guillermo returned to the area along with Leo’s mother, Rosalinda Sandoval, as part of the first-ever Xalatlaco-Ajusco Metropolitan Search Brigade, held from February 28 to March 6. Families of the disappeared came together to comb the hill on both sides of the Mexico City-Mexico State border.
The brigade took place as a group of families denounce local authorities’ inaction in the city’s disappearance crisis. They are calling for the firing of Enrique Camargo, the head of the Mexico City Search Commission - per the 2017 General Disappearance Law, the institution charged with locating the disappeared - and May Gómez, the head of the capital’s Special Prosecutor for Disappeared People (FIPEDE).
The brigade was organized by the Mexico State collective Flores en el Corazón, which brings together families of disappearance victims, along with the collective Armadillos Buscadores. The Ajusco is home to an ecological reserve known as both a weekend leisure destination and a haven for illegal logging operations. Because of security concerns, the Mexico State search commission threatened to pull their support at the last minute. On February 27, the day before the brigade began, members of the Mexico State collective Flores en el Corazón shut down a highway in protest. Only then did the authorities give the green light.
Despite the official reluctance, the brigade found four sets of human bone fragments, all on the Mexico State side of the Ajusco.
“The authorities refuse to do the search, but it’s becoming clear that if the families request it, it’s because we know that we’re going to find something. This is more proof,” said Rosalinda Sandoval in an interview with us.
“And we have to do it together,” added Guillermo. “This shows that this is a high-risk zone where people come to get rid of bodies, above all because it’s the border between Mexico City and Mexico State.”
The law already calls for states to work together to search for the disappeared, but recent cases reveal that the current practices are inadequate. Leo Sandoval’s case exemplifies the need for regional coordination: Mexico City authorities took almost two years to send his genetic information to Mexico State, where the local forensic institute housed his unidentified remains.
But during the metropolitan brigade, the Mexico City search commission was reluctant to participate across state lines. On the days that the searches took place on the Mexico State side, the capital’s commission refused to send transportation for Mexico City families and volunteers, insisting that it wasn’t their responsibility. Officials from the Mexico State commission participated in all six days of the brigade, and the interim commissioner, Alma Patricia Bernal, joined the searchers several of those days. The Mexico City commission was conspicuously absent until the final day, when the brigade crossed over to their jurisdiction. Ten officials attended, but commissioner Enrique Camargo never showed up.
The brigade occurred a month after Mexico City mayor Clara Brugada announced the creation of a Cabinet for Searching for Disappeared People, so far the keystone of her policy around disappearances. The Cabinet brings together members of the Mexico City Search Commission with public security officials, representatives from each city district and relatives of victims, among others. But families argue that the Cabinet is an unnecessary substitute for institutions that aren’t doing their job.
“There is already a disappearance law, an official search protocol. There are search commissions in all of the states, in the city, but they don’t operate,” said Gaby Alonso Villarruel, the sister of Yudisthir “Nimai” Piña Villarruel, who disappeared in September 2024 in Mexico City; his body was identified two weeks later in Mexico State. Alonso Villarruel is a member of the recently founded Luciérnagas Front of Families, which is spearheading the calls to remove the Commissioner and Special Prosecutor for the Disappeared.
“Why install something new, when we already have all the elements, this law, this protocol, this system, that the families have worked on since 2017?” she added. “We need them to work. We don’t need new things.”