A member of the search party that went out in the hills outside of Cocula, a town over from Iguala, on December 5th scans the hills for signs of camps of kidnapped persons. This man who preferred not to be identified is searching for his son who disappeared 5 years ago.
A text message displaying: “Not even your PGR was able to get anything out of us, now watch you wont see your kids again.” The PGR is the Federal Attorney General’s office who has subdivisions to investigate kidnapping cases. The cell phone that received the message belongs to Jorge Popoca who’s wife and two daughters he alleges were kidnapped about 6 months ago.
Miguel Angel Jimenez points at a cross etched in a tree trunk he thought to have been a criminal’s last attempt at remorse at the grave site where 28 people were burned and buried.
This road leads to the Cocula dump where the remains of one of the 43 students was found. The areas next to it were littered with trash and clothing presumed to belong to kidnapped individuals.
Miguel and a family member search a corn field near the site of there PGR forensic teams are investigating possible gravesites.
Edgar Estrada Reyes, 38 wife disappeared in June and has not been heard from. “I live with the fear that anytime theyll tell my wife to go look for me and take me too,” he said. He has since moved farther up into the country side to protect himself and his children. “I was very afraid at the beginning to file a report. Even here with cops Im afraid. Who wouldnt be? We dont know who to trust,” he added.
Here a campaign poster of Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of Iguala who ordered the attack on the students, on a abandoned building in Iguala. The sign’s campaign slogan reads “closer to you.” Abarca has since been arrested and has been charged with, among other things, links to organized crime.
Towns people gather with law enforcement officials during a town hall at the San Gerardo church to air their concern that the government has not done enough to find their missing. The meeting lasted almost eight hours.
This grave was found outside of Iguala soon after the 43 students disappeared. At first authorities suspected the graves contained the students but DNA confirmed that none of the 28 bodies belonged to the students shedding light on the years of disappearances that have plagued Iguala.
These belongings and trash were found near a grave that was found outside of Iguala soon after the 43 students disappeared. At first authorities suspected the graves contained the students but DNA confirmed that none of the 28 bodies belonged to the students shedding light on the years of disappearances that have plagued Iguala. Here Miguel holds up a “Manchester” brand shirt in good condition. Also found were women undergarments and bedding.
A winter moon sets over the hills of Iguala. Twenty-two thousand people have been reporting missing in Mexico. Human rights groups suspect the number is much higher. Although some are kidnapped for ransom in Iguala people suspect those who don’t require ransom were taken to work in cartel forced labor camps or simply murdered.
Twenty-year-old Jesus Pineda Corona helping the search effort. His shirt reads: I will search for you until I find you.”
Following paths off the main roads into the hills around Iguala you can find camps where criminals dump trash from days in the hills with kidnapped persons. This garment was found in an area called Butcher’s Hill not far from the dump of Cocula where one of the 43 disappeared students remains was found.
A landscape of Butcher’s Hill near Cocula where searchers received a tip about cartel activity in the area. This area is adjacent to the Cocula dump where the 43 students are believed to have been burned.
“These hills are graveyards,” confided Maria Natividad Martinez Gonzalez, a 71-year-old woman with skin leathered from working the fields her entire life.
Every day at the church of San Gerardo a group of about a dozen people gather to head out into the cartel-infested hills of Iguala, a town nestled in the Sierra Madre that crosses the Guerrero State of Mexico. They are searching for their loved ones.
Before September, when 43 students disappeared in the town center, nobody had dared report their missing out of fear of retribution from organized crime. Now, with international attention and the federal police having taken over security in the town, the townspeople have lost their fear and are demanding their loved ones be found, dead or alive.
Official numbers indicate that 22,000 people are missing in Mexico since former President Felipe Calderon began his war on drugs. However human rights groups suspect that number is much higher. Since the initiative began in Iguala, over 500 people have been reported as disappeared in a town of 120,000. This number provides a stark contrast to the 120 reported kidnappings in the entire State of Guerrero through November 2014 by the Executive Secretariat of the National System for Public Safety (SESNSP).
Miguel Angel Jimenez who is spearheading the search efforts and is a leader with the UPOEG, a community police organization, says about 32 suspected graves have been found so far.
Evidencia is a search for answers. It documents the people searching for their loved ones and their crawling quest for information about what happened to them. Each person and each artifact are small mysteries holding answers to where the the truth lives and who guards it.
Viewers are invited to look at this body of work in the same way that the people portrayed in it do — seeing graves, artifacts, belongings and wild landscapes as evidence of an hopelessly impenetrable cycle of violence punctuated by small glimpses into its grim essence.
