“No mother deserves to find not her son, but his bones – to only be able to hold his bones in her arms.” In a video posted on March 24, Ceci Flores says she is sure that the bones she is holding belong to her son, Marco Antonio. The video is filmed in a deserted, arid landscape near Hermosillo in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, where Marco Antonio disappeared in May 2019, after being kidnapped by an armed group.
A few days after her video was posted, a DNA test confirmed what Flores’ instinct had already told her: that the bones did indeed belong to her son. For her part, she had known since she discovered the bones next to clothing that matched the outfit Marco Antonio was wearing when he disappeared.
Flores says that searches were conducted in the area where his remains were discovered based on information provided by one of the people responsible for his disappearance, who was interviewed by the authorities.
More than 133,000 officially missing persons in Mexico
Mexico is plagued by disappearances. According to a national registry established in 2019, more than 133,000 people are officially “missing or unaccounted for.” The number is likely much higher, as not all disappearances are reported – sometimes because of fear or lack of faith in the authorities.
Criminal gangs are responsible for a large portion of these disappearances. But some public officials also bear both direct and indirect responsibility for some disappearances, according to a recent report by the UN. One of the most well-known cases involving the authorities is the abduction and subsequent disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in Guerrero state in 2014.
“In the case of my son, Marco Antonio, it’s a cartel that was responsible for his disappearance. He had a shop where he sold drinks, food, etc, but also drugs, except he wasn’t working for the cartel,” Flores says.
However, all types of people are disappearing, not just those with links to the cartel or carrying out illegal activities. The disappeared include men, women and even children.
‘Mothers wouldn’t have to carry out the searches themselves if the authorities were doing their jobs’
Flores may have just discovered the remains of her son, Marco Antonio, but she is still searching for another one of her sons, Alejandro, who disappeared in 2015. Another son was also abducted in 2019 at the same time as Marco Antonio, but, thankfully, he was discovered alive a few days later.
It was that terrible year when Flores founded a collective she calls “Madres Buscadoras de Sonora” (“The searching mothers of Sonora”), which brings together mothers looking for their missing loved ones.
“I created it because of my sons’ disappearances. Mothers wouldn’t have to carry out the searches themselves if the authorities were doing their jobs. They have the technology, the tools and the resources to do it. It is because of the authorities’ inaction that we have to create collectives to search for missing people, to investigate their disappearances and to find them.”
We carry out searches using picks, shovels and sensors. We are looking both for those who have died as well as those who are still alive: we visit detention centres, we walk the streets… we’ve already found more than 3,000 people alive and more than 2,700 who have died [Editor’s note: our team was unable to independently verify these numbers.]
When I found Marco Antonio’s remains, it was very painful because I knew that I wouldn’t see him again, not to mention that we only found some of his bones.”
‘We are shining a light on something that shouldn’t be happening’
According to a report by Amnesty International, there are more than 200 collectives of families searching for missing loved ones in Mexico – and 90% of the members are women. The report highlighted the dangers and difficulties faced by these women, including assassinations, further disappearances, attacks, threats and stigmatisation. Between February 2011 and May 2025, at least 30 family members of the missing were assassinated.
The most recent case involves Cecilia García Ramblas. She was a member of a collective in Salamanca in the Guanajuato state. She was kidnapped in mid-March, and her body was found a few days later.
Flores is aware of the risks:
“I receive threats every day, telling me to stop searching. The problem is that we report on all of the remains that we find, which makes both the cartels and the authorities look bad, because we are shining a light on something that shouldn’t be happening.
I can’t confirm that they are the ones threatening me, but the threats are daily. People have pointed guns at me and the other mothers. Some [of the other mothers] have disappeared or been executed. We’d like more protection from the authorities, especially when we are carrying out searches.”
Despite the risks, Flores isn’t going to give up anytime soon:
“The love for our missing loved ones makes us forget the fear. I want to keep speaking about our reality, so that people know that we exist and to raise awareness about our missing loved ones. They aren’t statistics or numbers, but people who deserve to be looked for, no matter what their pasts.”
She also believes that more needs to be done for the many children whose parents have disappeared. “Many become orphans and need help from society,” she says.
This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.
This story originally appeared on France24
