Translated by Amy Johnston
It has been one month since January 11 when a group of policemen disappeared 5 young people. The parents of the young people maintain a sit-in in front of the state attorney’s office in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz. Even with the economic help of citizens, friends and family, they are living in uncertainty which exhausts them.
Since January 11, when the parents of Alfredo González Díaz were given the news that their son had been disappeared by members of the police force, María del Carmen Díaz has up to 3 anxiety attacks per day. María González, the sister of Alfredo, one of the five young people who disappeared in Tierra Blanca following a stop by members of the Veracruz State Police, tries to keep her voice calm while she explains:
“I work in a pharmacy here in Playa Vicente, but since this tragedy has happened to us I have had to be at home looking after my mother because she could suffer from a nervous breakdown at any time and it has made her ill.”
MV Note: Tierra Blanca and Playa Vicente are both municipalites in southern Veracruz. The youths are from Playa Vicente. They were seized at a gas station in Tierra Blanca on their way home from a trip to the beach on the Gulf Mexico coast. The state prosecutor's office is also in Tierra Blanca.Her father’s situation is even worse, she complains: the shock from receiving the bad news last Monday affected his health for the worse. When the Secretariat of Govenment Relations announced that they found remains of two of the five young people in El Limón ranch, located in the municipality of Tlalixcoyan [adjacent to Tierra Blanca], it aggravated the diabetes that Jose Alfredo Gonzalez suffers from. He had already suffered the loss of a foot, as well as losing his lifelong job of livestock farming.
“Since he was little, my brother worked on the ranch looking after cattle. He was always a cowboy until he lost a foot a few years ago. Then he had to have rigorous treatment and that was when my nephew took responsibility for looking after his dad and the upkeep of the house,” explains Rócio Arróniz, aunt of 25 year-old Alfredo González.Young Alfredo worked on the ranch of the President of the Muncipality of Playa Vicente [Vincent Beach] looking after cattle and horses. His aunt was asked about how they are managing as a family following Alfredo’s disappearance. Arróniz explains that she and other family members are doing what they can to get by.
“Alfredo’s family always worked well. They are modest people but very hard working. They never would have imagined having this problem,” she adds.For her part, María González commented that the owner of the ranch where her brother worked is paying the family his twice-a-month salary. He is doing this in order to help them with expenses. After letting out an almost indiscernible sigh, the young woman says:
“A human gesture that helps us with the economic burden we have as a family in these moments of uncertainty.”Mother of missing girl speaks
Despite the news of the discovery of remains of the two young people on a ranch, Carmen Garibo assures that they haven't lost hope that this was only a passing nightmare and that her daughter Susana - a young girl of only just 16 years who aspires to work as an engineer in Pemex – soon will return home to help with the grocery shop that her family run.
“We can’t accept what they said about finding remains of our guys on a ranch,” she said, leading to a few seconds of silence. Then, after her brief moment of reflection, she adds, “Well, we don’t want to accept it," this with a dull tone, as though she had just understood her own words. “We want to believe that those results are wrong and that our guys are fine. Then we can use our faith in God to keep hoping.”However, despite the prayers said daily, Carmen cannot avoid feeling increasingly exhausted. Mother and father not only to Susana but also to three other children for whom she has provided as a single mother, she explains:
“Right now I am calm because we are together as parents and we are going through the most difficult moments of our lives together. But this is something that you wouldn’t want, even for your worst enemy. It’s something very powerful, which exhausts you from the inside out.
“We are a modest family who are wholly devoted to our small shop. Therefore my other children are there, in Playa Vicente, helping me in ways they are able to so that we can try to keep the business going while I am here and not there,” she explains.She also thanked the people of Tierra Blanca and Playa Vicente for their solidarity over the last 30 days since the disappearance of the young people at the hands of the state police.
“The people from Tierra Blanca are behaving very well. We have been supported through gifts of food, shelter, mattresses and some even come here to the encampment to pray with us,” highlighted Susana’s mother.Dionisia Sánchez, mother of Mario Arturo Orozco, who depends on the income from her small pedicure business, also commented:
“Thanks to the people from Tierra Blanca and Playa Vicente for their solidarity and for bringing us supplies, we can still be here demanding justice from the authorities.”