2023-10-17 16:00:58
When Yadira Martinez prepares her son’s favorite dish, it’s as if he’s still there. So she shared the recipe in a cookbook written with other women in memory of loved ones who went missing in one of Mexico’s most violent states.
“When I prepare his eggs, I feel that he is here, that he will come home and sit down to eat with us,” explains this 44-year-old woman in her home in Irapuato, in Guanajuato, a state in the center of this country which has a homicide rate of 28 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official figures.
Some 3,700 people are missing there, out of the more than 112,000 disappearances recorded in Mexico, the majority since 2006 and the start of a war launched by the government once morest drug trafficking which has seen violence explode and in particular extortion and forced recruitment.
The money from the sale of the book allows around forty women to carry out tireless searches to try to find their loved ones.
An onion, tomatoes, chili… Yadira Martinez prepares the “Mexican eggs with fried beans” that her son Jaime loved so much, until his death in 2018 at the age of 22.
“Pozole for Gregorio”, “Stuffed pepper for Antonio”, “Lasagna for Raymundo”…: the work lists 71 recipes, accompanied by a note on each missing person and the families’ fight to find them.
Karla Jiménez shared the recipe for enchiladas, these tortillas filled with meat, vegetables and spices typical of Mexico, that her brother Juan Valentin, who died in 2020, loved so much. “He was a plumber and was 37 years old,” the book states.
Talk regarding “what they like”
Yadira Martinez and other members of the “Hasta encontrarte” collective search for the remains of missing loved ones, in Pénjamo, Guanajuato state, Mexico, September 26, 2023
AFP
“It’s regarding talking regarding the missing differently, not just regarding searches or death but also regarding what they like, what they don’t like, what music they listen to,” says Zahara Gomez Lucini, the photographer. at the origin of the project.
Half of the profit from sales is donated to groups searching for the missing. Since October 2022, some 2,000 copies have been printed.
Yadira Martinez struggles within the collective “Hasta encontrarte” (“Until I find you”) that she created in 2021 with other women to try to find traces of missing loved ones.
With around ten women from this group, who say they have found 180 bodies so far, she recently raked a piece of land in Penjamo, south of the town of Guanajauto, following receiving anonymous tips.
“If there is a smell of putrefaction, it may be because there is a clandestine grave,” says Carla Vasquez, 20, who has been searching for her brother for five years.
Yadira Martinez and other members of the “Hasta encontrarte” collective search for the remains of missing loved ones, in Pénjamo, Guanajuato state, Mexico, September 26, 2023
AFP
Two heavily armed municipal police motorized teams ensure the safety of the women. In May 2023, a mother searching for her son was murdered in the same state.
At least five criminal groups are vying for control of Guanajuato, a key territory for the transit of drugs to the United States.
Despite the violence, the region remains a major tourist destination and an industrial center housing foreign factories.
In addition to the many missing, more than 420,000 people have been murdered in Mexico since 2006.
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