The faces of Mexico’s disappeared are posted across Guadalajara, turning everyday routines into repeated prompts to search for people relatives say were taken and never returned. In the AP report, thousands of fliers—bearing names, dates, locations and smiling photos—appear on buildings, monuments, lamp posts, parking meters, tree pots and bus stops as families in the state of Jalisco try to keep attention on the cases. Families say the signs’ visibility is being challenged as violence and fears about security rise ahead of the FIFA World Cup, when Guadalajara will host matches.
The report described how the forced-disappearance crisis has long shaped daily life in Jalisco, including after an explosion of violence on Sunday that followed the killing of Mexico’s cartel leader known as “El Mencho.” It said Jalisco is among the states with the highest number of disappeared people, with 12,500 documented cases. In that environment, families say clashes between cartels and Mexican forces have already disrupted search efforts, including efforts to locate clandestine grave sites.
Carmen López, who said she is searching for her brother and nephew, described the issue as one of visibility and political risk. She told the Associated Press that “They don’t want people coming to the World Cup, people coming from abroad, to see” the fliers, adding, “It’s not in their interest, because they would get their hands dirty. It makes the government look bad in front of the entire world.” López said she worries that the signs will be cleared from public view as the international tournament approaches.
Other family members and search organizers also described the work as constant and fragile. Héctor Flores, identified in the AP report as a leader of the search group Luz de Esperanza, said he began hanging fliers in Guadalajara after his 19-year-old son was forcibly disappeared by agents from the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office. The report said a Mexican court later recognized that 2021 forced disappearance. Flores said his collective investigates disappearances involving relatives from about 500 families and that it hangs anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 fliers each weekend, describing the posters as something search groups must keep replacing because they are often taken down.
Flores characterized the fliers as both an ongoing search tool and a way of keeping the disappeared “visible” while authorities and conditions make progress difficult. He told the Associated Press: “This is an act of searching in real time, with the hope that people who see these ID cards, they can provide us with information that will help us locate our families,” and added, “It’s also an act of visibility.” The AP report said families fill in identifying details including tattoos and the date and location where relatives went missing.
The Associated Press report tied the families’ concerns to a proposal that would change how the signs can be posted and where they can legally remain. It said lawmakers had pushed modifications to a bill originally intended to protect the fliers from being taken down, and that the modification appears to families as a shift toward creating prohibited public spaces for hanging the posters. Families told AP they believed those changes would help authorities “whitewash the issue of the missing” ahead of the World Cup and that the pressure follows years of efforts by authorities to downplay the scale of Mexico’s disappearance crisis.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Jalisco state legislator Norma López, a member of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party, denied the accusation that the proposal targets the fliers. The report said she described families’ interpretation as “bad interpretation” and said she wanted to defend search efforts. Norma López told AP that if passed, the law would allow posters to be taken down inside spaces like public universities, the state legislature, the Supreme Court, museums, churches and more “without penalty,” while saying posters were already allowed in other places.
Norma López also said her position was motivated by personal loss. The AP report said she told AP: “My proposal is not a basis for banning them,” and “We are all concerned about what is happening in Jalisco. The disappearances also pain me.” The report said Mexico’s National Search Commission for the disappeared did not respond to a request for comment. It also said search groups in Jalisco told AP that they had suspended investigating potential clandestine grave sites because Mexico’s federal government told them security forces that provide protection to teams could not temporarily help due to the violence.
As the report described, violence and uncertainty around major events have added to the families’ sense that justice is still out of reach. The Associated Press said the “faces of Mexico’s disappeared” line Guadalajara’s streets, while some residents describe the signs as now part of the backdrop. In the report, Jacinto González, 47, told AP that “Now, it’s just normal,” as he walked past hundreds of fliers on a wall and later said his sister-in-law went missing six years ago.