The federal government’s deployment to find four kidnapped US citizens was what would be expected when a similar tragedy involves Mexicans. That’s why it was news, because it was totally unusual. The fact that nothing similar exists when it comes to nationals leaves a trail of indignant doubly orphans of justice.
Searching mothers have to scratch the earth with their own hands and are rarely accompanied or supported by any government agent. This reality contrasts with what was seen in Matamoros: a press conference to report the kidnapping of United States citizens warranted the presence of three state secretaries.
The fact that on Tuesday they were able to find the whereabouts of those kidnapped on Friday, the fact that fortunately at least two of those victims were found alive, is an unknown and unthinkable reality for the Mexican families who denounce the disappearance of one of their its members.
But, at the same time, this selective effectiveness will unnerve thousands of homes throughout Mexico, mothers, fathers, and siblings of the disappeared who never tire of going to prosecutors where the files of their loved ones are just dead weight in a file.
The State has shown that it can, but only in exceptional cases, only when the pressure threatens to overwhelm it in other agendas, in other areas. If the claimant is a national, then the most the federal government will do is give reports of those so-called zero impunity from the comfortable podium in the morning.
This is how it will be as long as the victims do not accumulate enough power to force the government to attend to them diligently, so that what today is a disdained obligation becomes an issue that cannot be postponed.
On top of that, the victims of crimes –disappearances, kidnappings, murders, “confusions”, etc.– see helplessly that there is no party or social agent with influence that accompanies and even less champions their struggle.
The party system does not want to champion that cause. The ruling party, which came to power in part due to the grievances of the lack of justice of the Prianism, today attends to that national drama dropper. He has despised any encounter with victims who are not from Ayotzinapa, and the National Palace turns the other way when missing persons, femicides, murders, massacres are claimed.
The opposition offers no alternative either: virtually all of its state governments have been characterized by indolence and ineffectiveness. This week, to go no further, a report by Nmas unmasked the governor of Nuevo León, who, with more than 900 women disappeared in that entity, did not have time to receive the reporter Alejandra Barriguete, who for months asked him to testify about that history in order to explain why they do nothing to live up to the great state they claim to be.
Hence, the question is whether there will be any political actor, current or to emerge, that can make the lack of justice become the priority issue that it is not today. Or if it will be several seeking mothers who in some way articulate the political resistance and protest that make their struggle become central in the public agenda.
The edges of the lack of justice permeate more because President López Obrador lacks the essential empathy to understand that what happened in Matamoros revictimizes Mexican women who have not received from the State a diligence, an investigation, or anything that is not tortuguism and contempt.
Will someone achieve that the lack of justice becomes an electoral issue, or have we all discounted the grievance of living in impunity?
