Violence in Mexico: the martyrdom of five childhood friends haunts Lagos de Moreno

September 7, 2023

Bloody handprints were found on the walls of an abandoned house in Lagos de Moreno, western Mexico, where five young people, childhood friends, were tortured by suspected drug traffickers, who may have be obliged to finish each other off.

Three weeks later, Dante, Diego, Jaime, Roberto Carlos and Uriel added to the list of 111,200 people missing in a country where insecurity should be one of the themes of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Like thousands of others, their families cannot begin to grieve because the bodies are missing. No body, no offence, such is the logic of the assassins.

Lagos de Moreno alone has 404 people disappeared since 2009. Many ended up in clandestine graves, ovens and acid vats.

“We still have the hope that they will return the body to us to give it a Christian burial,” says Armando Olmeda, father of Roberto Carlos.

Named in homage to the former Brazilian star of Real Madrid, Roberto Carlos, 20, was a student of industrial engineering. He loved boxing and considered emigrating to Canada.

He had found his four friends Dante, Diego, Jaime and Uriel on the evening of Friday August 11 in the working-class San Miguel neighborhood.

The five young people were kidnapped and taken to an abandoned house away from the town.

Five more kidnappings? A video shared by the executioners sparked outrage across the country.

The five martyrs are on their knees, their hands tied, gagged. One of them attacks one of his friends, probably under pressure from the criminals. In this sequence, two bodies are already lying on the ground.

“My brother found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time,” sighs Ana Martinez, brother of Jaime, a 21-year-old mason. A “crack” at football, who gave up a professional career for lack of means, she remembers.

In Lagos de Moreno, the case of the five missing paralyzes young people.

“Being young in Lagos and going out at night is like putting a gun in your mouth,” said one student. “I don’t know if I’m going to come back.”

The police “are conspicuous by their absence”, complains a local trader, noting a drop in turnover.

After the crime, authorities arrested 85 people for presumed disappearance, Jalisco state security coordinator Ricardo Sánchez told AFP.

Under intense sunlight, lizards run in front of the abandoned house where the five young people were tortured.

On the walls, next to the traces of blood, the crime seems to bear a signature: “Bienvenidos MZ”, indicates a graffiti.

An allusion to Ismael “Mayo” Zambada, one of the chefs of the Sinaloa cartel, at war with the rival Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel.

What could be the motive for the crime? Forced recruitment, or show of force by narco-terrorists, envisages Father Mauricio Jimenez, priest in this city which has 112,000 souls.

Lagos de Moreno is a charming colonial town classified by UNESCO. The local economy is driven by the presence of a Nestlé factory.

It is also a strategic node between the states of Jalisco, Guanajuato and Zacatecas, which the country’s two main cartels compete for.

Lagos de Moreno is in Jalisco, the state with the most missing persons in Mexico (nearly 15,000). Most were kidnapped when former President Felipe Calderon militarized the fight against drugs.

Denouncing the inaction of the authorities, relatives searched the ground with picks and shovels.

This is the case of José Servin, who is looking for his son José, who has been missing since 2018. He plants a stem in the earth, which he breathes to see if it ever smells like a corpse.

José Servin leads his desperate search in the suburb of Guadalajara – the capital of Jalisco, Mexico’s second city – in Tlajomulco, where more than 200 bodies have been found this year alone.

The father-courage defies the authorities who suspended the search in July, when an attack killed four police officers and two civilians in this town on the outskirts of Guadalajara.

In Lagos de Moreno, the tragedy awakens old wounds in the parents of the missing. This is the case of Ana, whose son was disintegrated in acid with other young people in 2013.

Ana was only given one bone to identify 19-year-old Angel through DNA evidence. “It’s an injury that lacerates me every hour.”

Roberto Carlos’ father hopes his wounds will begin to heal when he reunites with his son “one way or another.” “We will continue to work, we need to continue to live and relieve the pain.”