Guadalajara is getting a faceelift.
Mexico’s second city is preparing to host four World Cup games.
Security is being stepped up.
Excitement is building.
But there’s a darker side to this place.
Sadly, all those images are representing missing people here in Walara.
Across the city, there’s a seemingly endless catalog of faces.
.
Some of the more than 16,000 people who have disappeared from the wider Haliscoco State area.
Many of them, it’s thought, have been murdered by cartels.
But the families of the missing say they’ve been abandoned by the authorities.
I’m in the hills above Guadalajara with 11 women from a group known as Guerreras Buscadoris or Warrior Searchers and they’re digging for graves.
Marabel is on the phone at the moment to the person who gave them the tip to come to this area.
She’s trying to find where exactly they discovered what they thought might be bones.
They wear the faces of their loved ones.
Some have done searches like this dozens, even hundreds of times.
In relentless heat, without machinery, it’s backbreaking and unbelievably bleak work driven by desperation.
After an hour of searching, the women think they might have a breakthrough.
It’s here.
It’s here.
She says all the women have rushed over to this specific area.
Um, that’s because the tip that they received was from someone who said that they thought there might be a bag underneath a large rock in this area.
And so they’re attacking it with picks and shovels and their hands.
First they find a bone.
And then I think that’s a head, she says.
I think it’s a head.
He still has hair, says another.
They uncover an entire skeleton wrapped in plastic.
It’s buried alongside registration plates, a car key, and an empty wallet.
There’s a really strange contradiction of emotions here because these women are looking for bodies and they believe they’ve found one, but they also know that, you know, while this might not be their missing loved one, it is someone’s family member.
Sandra, who’s been looking for her son for seven years, has to turn away.
As one searcher breaks the ground, another urges the women to say a prayer.
The group gather in a circle.
Among them, Leita, who’s looking for her five children.
Her daughter went missing first, then her four sons.
Those four were taken all at once at the same time in the same day.
They disappeared on December 19, 2018.
Lucerito, my daughter, disappeared first on a highway on June 6, 2016.
I’ve been looking for her for 10 years, but I haven’t give up hope on bringing her back home.
It’s a mixed bag of emotions.
I feel a lot of anxiety.
We came here full of hope, but we also don’t want to find them here.
It is terrible.
This is a brave endeavor, too.
By conducting these searches, the women risk retribution from the cartels.
Across Mexico, a number of women have been killed for doing just this.
They call the police to tell them about the body they found.
Two hours later, officers arrive.
They promise they will investigate.
Is this a problem for people coming to the World Cup? No.
None.
There’s no problem about this.
He says they don’t have to worry about this about cartels.
Like what? He asks.
No, not at all.
Violence erupted in Mexico in February after a notorious cartel boss was killed by the military near Guadalajara.
Some called for the city to be stripped of its World Cup games.
Now there’s a show of force to project a sense of safety and order.
Local authorities in Mexico have spent $55 million on security and surveillance for this World Cup.
They’ll be using drones.
Attention.
Please exit the area immediately.
Robots and Blackhawk helicopters.
The head of the police force, which includes the stadium, shows me where they’ll be monitoring fans.
One of the things that our mayor has made sure of is parenting the safety of all the people who come.
What would you say to the families of missing people who are searching for the bodies of their own loved ones and feel that they’re not a priority here? Actually, there are different issues.
There are various state agencies that receive reports from the searching mothers regarding where they believe their missing loved ones might be.
Although they are acting outside the law, they are still assisted and their case are follow up on.
As a municipal authority, we can only support these efforts by working to prevent these crimes.
His words ring hollow for Marbel.
Her brother, Jose, who has five children, is missing.
All she knows is that he was taken by people in a pickup truck.
For 5 years, she searched for answers without any help from authorities.
There is so much money being spent on policing this World Cup, yet you are going out quite literally with picks and shovels on your own to try and find your missing family members.
How does that make you feel? The authorities are worrying too much about the safety of the foreigners, of people who come to the World Cup, but they are not thinking about the security of us, their relatives.
that we expose ourselves a lot in each search.
We risk our lives.
We don’t have the support from any institution.
Money that Marabel would have spent on her four-year-old daughter instead goes to looking for her brother.
The World Cup with all its trappings will take place a short drive from here.
It feels a world away.
