This page is also available in Spanish. Click here to access.
On 30 August 2021, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s Resilience Fund launched the project ‘Disappeared is a place: The landscapes and stories of those who are #StillMissing’, the result of a collaboration between the 10 recipients of the 2020 Resilience Fellowship and Mexican journalist Daniela Rea, winner of the Breach-Valdez Prize for Journalism and Human Rights.
This multimedia initiative (available in English and Spanish) is not only the result of collective work by those who have experienced firsthand the disappearance of people from their communities; it also seeks to raise awareness about the role criminal groups play in this phenomenon, one that those in the international and human rights’ arenas must address as it can affect anyone, anywhere.
As part of this project, launched on the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, fellow María Isabel Cruz Bernal, of Culiacán, Sinaloa, who participated in the project by telling the story of her son who disappeared in 2017, organized several days of activities in Culiacán to commemorate the day along with her civil society organization Sabuesos Guerreras (warrior trackers).
With the support of Hastaencontrarles.com, the magazine Revista Espejo and the Mexico Violence Resource Project, members of Sabuesos Guerreras along with the activist groups Recuperar-Arte and Juan Panadero, organized the mass distribution of flyers in public spaces in the city centre, including the cathedral and a monument that is a popular tourist attraction, which was covered in posters with illustrations of faces of the disappeared.
Family members and activists also placed coloured ribbons on a tree outside the public prosecutor’s office to bring visibility to the office’s failure to prioritize victims of enforced disappearance and to exert pressure on the institution.
The ribbons hanging from what relatives have termed ‘the waiting tree’ display the names of the disappeared alongside messages of hope. Another installation, a large empty chair with a mirror placed in a public plaza, invited passers-by to ask themselves what would happen if they were the ones who were #StillMissing.
The closing ceremony took place at the Sinaloa Sciences Centre with the screening of the documentary directed by Daniela Rea titled Landscapes, which was a key part of the multimedia project supported by the Resilience Fellowship. Siria Gastélum Félix, director of the Resilience Fund, was present along with members of other human rights organizations and the media.