Disappearances in Mexico surge by 200% over 10 years

It was a bright morning in August 2022 when Ángel Montenegro was taken. A 31-year-old construction worker, Montenegro had been out all night drinking with some work buddies in the city of Cuautla and was waiting for a bus back to nearby Cuernavaca where he lived.

At about 10am, a white van pulled up: several men jumped out and dragged Montenegro and a co-worker inside before speeding off. Montenegro’s co-worker was released a few hundred meters down the street, but Montenegro was driven away. “The desperation started when night fell,” said his mother, Patricia García, who has now spent more than three torturous years looking for her son.

García joined a collective of 12 women who went out searching weekly, probing the ground with metal rods for signs of buried corpses. The November after Montenegro was taken, the group searched a field on the outskirts of Cuautla where his phone had last pinged a cell tower and found six bodies; a later search turned up another five.

Mexico, Cuautla, Cuernavaca

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