Fourth mother searching for missing child killed in Mexico

MEXICO CITY - Another mother searching for her missing child has been killed in Mexico, the fourth murder of a volunteer search activist in Mexico since the beginning of 2021.

Activists said Tuesday that the victim was Esmeralda Gallardo, who led efforts to find her missing 22-year-old daughter.

The activist group Voice of the Disappeared in Puebla said Gallardo was killed in the city of Puebla, east of Mexico City.

Prosecutors in Puebla pledged to solve the case as soon as possible. The group called for authorities to make a statement to leave aside the superficial speeches and to ensure the safety of the victims, and the rights and safety of the families of the disappeared. The UN human rights office in Mexico said Gallardo had been shot to death. The UN office condemned the killing and said in a statement that Gallardo had provided relevant information about her daughter's disappearance, which was not effectively taken into account during the search or investigation of the crime. The daughter of Gallardo, Betzabe Alvarado Gallardo, disappeared in January 2021 in the low-income neighborhood of Villa Frontera.

In August, search activist Rosario Rodr guez Barraza was killed in the northern state of Sinaloa, home to the drug cartel of the same name.

In 2021, searcher Aranza Ramos was found dead in the northern state of Sonora a day after her search group found a still-smoking body disposal pit. Earlier in the year, volunteer search activist Javier Barajas Pi was shot down in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico's most violent.

The motive in the killings remained unclear, and many searchers have said they aren't looking for evidence to convict killers in the past.

Most volunteer search teams consist of mothers of Mexico's over 100,000 missing people.

Many mothers are forced to do their own investigations or join search teams that are often sucked into the ground by iron rods to detect the tell-tale stench of decomposing bodies when faced with official inaction or incompetence.

The police, and the searchers, who sometimes accompany them, focus on finding graves and identifying remains. Sometimes, search groups get anonymous info about where bodies are buried, knowledge that is only available to the killers or their accomplices.

The mainly female volunteers often recount getting threats and being watched — presumably by the same people who murdered their children, brothers and husbands.

A group of search groups, known as collectives, issued a statement demanding protection for searching mothers after the killing in August.

The coalition wrote that no mother should be killed for trying to find her children. The government is obliged to ensure their safety in continuing their search, as long as thousands of cases of disappeared people continue to pile up.