By Alicia Fernandez and Leila Miller
MEXICO CITY, May 10 (Reuters) – Thousands of people, led by mothers of those who have disappeared during decades of drug violence, marched in Mexico’s capital on Sunday, protesting the violence and impunity plaguing the country as it prepares to co-host the FIFA World Cup.
Collectives of mothers of the missing, who march every Mother’s Day, called on soccer fans to join them, saying in a statement that “there is nothing to celebrate, because the mothers of Mexico are playing the most difficult match: the one for justice.”
“Mexico, champion in disappearances,” protesters chanted as they marched down Paseo de la Reforma, the signature boulevard in Mexico City, holding banners and signs emblazoned with pictures of missing people. They passed a roundabout surrounded with metal barriers that are permanently covered with pictures of the disappeared.
“We had to start fighting, because no one wanted to take charge of the disappearance (case),” said Graciela Perez Rodriguez, whose daughter and four other relatives disappeared in 2012 in the northern state of Tamaulipas as they traveled on a highway after a trip to the U.S.
Mexico has more than 130,000 missing people, with disappearances surging after 2006, when the country launched its war on drug cartels.
Police and other government officials are often implicated in the crimes. Mothers who search for their missing children themselves when authorities fail to act are sometimes also targeted by criminal groups and killed.
In March, Mexican authorities said they had potentially identified more than 40,000 people listed as disappeared who may be alive, after a review of the national registry of missing persons showed some activity across other government records.
But the public policy group Mexico Evalua found there has been a 200% increase in disappearances over the last decade, due to the growing power of organized crime groups.
Rodriguez said she worries that the case of her missing family members is no longer a priority since almost 14 years have passed.
“We feel this emptiness,” she said.
(Reporting by Leila Miller in Buenos Aires and Alicia Fernandez in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Paul Simao)
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