Families search for nearly 100,000 missing in Mexico

(14 Oct 2021) Nearly 100,000 people are officially missing in Mexico, after a year during which the National Search Commission’s registry of Mexico’s disappeared has grown more than 20%. Searchers from groups that have sprung up across Mexico have convened on the central state of Morelos this month for the sixth National Search Brigade for Disappeared Persons. Tranquilina Hernández has been looking for her daughter Mireya for seven years. She disappeared on a September afternoon, after going out with her boyfriend in Cuernavaca, the state capital. With a small machete, rake and shovel, wearing a shirt with her daughter’s photo on it, 44-year-old Hernández combed through the banks of the stream. On this day, in six hours of searching, she would only find a dog’s jaw and a cow’s ribs, but it did not dampen her resolve. “I don’t know, I dream of hugging her, kissing her, hearing her voice,“ she said. “I need to know what happened to her