“A little bit of justice”
Photo by Dawn Marie Paley, photo editing by Ojalá.
Interview • Dawn Marie Paley • April 5, 2023 • Leer en castellano
In Mexico, María Luisa Nuñez Barojas represents hope. A hope borne of unthinkable pain, the pain of a woman searching for her disappeared son.
Nuñez Barojas is a lawyer, born to a campesino family in Tehuizo, a town in the state of Puebla with a view of the Pico de Orizaba volcano. For the last five years she’s been defending the rights of victims of enforced disappearance through accompaniment and pro bono legal support.
On Friday April 28, 2017, her son Juan de Dios Nuñez Barojas was disappeared together with two brothers, Abraham and Vicente Basurto Linares, in the municipality of Palmar de Bravo, Puebla. The Basurto Linares brothers were soldiers: Vicente was on active duty and Abraham was in the process of leaving the force.
The last time Nuñez Barojas heard from her son, he was returning home after paying some bills. He was 23 years old, and had been preparing for his wedding, which was to have taken place the following weekend.
“I’m on my way home, mom,” Juan de Dios told her.
Those were the last words Nuñez Barojas heard her son say.
At first light the next day, Nuñez Barojas began a search that would transform her life. She confirmed immediately that the Basurto Linares brothers hadn’t returned home either. Together with the Basurto Linares family she went to every local police station, to the Military Police base, and to the Federal Police barracks.
“We thought maybe they’d had too many drinks, or that they’d done something stupid and been detained,” she said. “There was no way I could have imagined… It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility to think something so horrific, so terror-inducing as disappearance could have taken place.”
Around the same time, disappearances in the state of Puebla began to increase. By February of 2023 there were nearly 2,500 people missing and disappeared in the state. That’s why Nuñez Barojas created a collective of family members of the disappeared, which is called Voice of the Disappeared in Puebla.
In February of last year, Nuñez Barojas found her son’s body. Less than a month later, on March 8th, she was back in the streets, walking together with thousands of women in the city of Puebla. Her struggle is what creates the possibility of hope for justice in Mexico.
Earlier this year I had the chance to sit with María Luisa in a restaurant near the Puebla Attorney General’s office at the edge of the city’s downtown. She arrived dressed formally, which she told me was part of how she has learned to navigate Mexican institutions so that she will be listened to and respected. Our interview has been translated from Spanish and lightly edited for clarity and length.
Dawn Marie Paley: Right away, you made a collective report of the disappearances on the part of both families. Can you tell me about that first moment, after the disappearance of Juan de Dios and the Basurto Linares brothers?
María Luisa Nuñez Barojas: Yes. That Saturday we went out to search, we went to all different places, and on Sunday we made the decision to present a single report of the disappearance for all three. We went to Tecamachalco and made [the police report].
“At the same time I reported the robbery of the truck they were driving, and nothing happened, the police didn’t do anything. I asked them to review my son’s call logs and they didn’t do that either.”
So we started to search for them in ditches and on back roads. When we heard a body was found we would go, hoping it wasn’t theirs. We always, always hoped to find them alive and in good health.
DMP: The following year you founded the Voice of the Disappeared collective in Puebla. Tell me about that.
MLNB: On May 10, 2018 [Mother’s Day in Mexico], I had the idea to hold a protest here at the AG’s office. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know a single family in the same situation we were at the time. So it was just Abraham and Vicente’s family and us, and my family is really small. We took a bus that was lent to them, there weren't more than 15 of us.
We had photos of the boys, we had banners and posters. And of course we arrived at the office and no one received us. They never paid us any attention. But it helped, because journalists arrived and we were able to publicize the case.
I was in touch with Julio Mata Montiel, he’s been accompanying the case of Tita Radilla, and he was helping me from a distance. And he told me, over the phone: “María Luisa, you have to form a collective, María Luisa, form a collective.”
I didn’t want a collective. And he told me “the collectives come to Mexico City to march.” And I said to him: “What I want is to find my son, and I’m not going to find him in a march.”
I was all over the place, desperately searching for my son. We did everything. We saw card readers and spiritualists, and they are the worst, worse even than those who carry out the disappearances, because they carry out horrible emotional torture.
“A year went by, and I realized that people disappear, and nothing happens. ”
So over the phone I said to Julio, “listen, Julio, I need you to come to Puebla, we need to talk.” Lucía—Vicente and Abraham’s mother—and I came to the AG’s office, and Julio came too. And I said to him, “Ok, so what do I need to form a collective?” And he said “nothing.” And I was like “what, seriously? I know that to found an association you have to go to a notary and etcétera.”
I was super emotional. We were sitting there, and I said, “If right now I say ‘look, I’m a collective now,’ that’s it?”
And he said: “Seriously María Luisa, collectives don’t have to be legally constituted or anything like that.”
Then and then I said: “Okay, starting now we’re the Voice of the Disappeared in Puebla collective.”
DMP: And that’s how the collective starts in Puebla. Tell me more about your experience with the collective.
MLNB: The first thing I did was go on social media and start to look for posts about disappearances in Puebla. I made a list and, for better or for worse, created my own post using my personal phone number, because we didn’t know any better. I say for better or for worse because doing so put us at risk of extortion.
I would reach out to people and I would tell them, so they would listen and not hang up on me: “My son has also disappeared and I’m forming a collective.”
We decided to hold a demonstration against the state’s Attorney General because they don’t investigate or search. I made a callout in Word, I ripped a logo off the web and called for a peaceful march on August 30 [the International Day of the Victims of Forced Disappearances]. Fourteen families showed up, they came from Puebla and from Cholula.
DMP: How do you describe the work of the collective?
MLNB: The common denominator among the families is the same: inaction and omission, revictimization and criminalization. So I started writing to Congress. The General Law [on Enforced Disappearance], a year after it was adopted, was a dead letter in Puebla. There was no Specialized Attorney General, there was no Search Commission, there was no state legislation. Nothing.
So that’s what I started working on, I was the only lawyer involved. On my own, I started working and shaping my letters and analysis and later, invoking the collective.
I started to understand so much more, and talking with the families, and I began to go with them to the AG to review their investigation folders, which the officials weren’t even letting them see. They didn’t know their rights at all. Officials would have them sign off on a form explaining their rights, but without explaining their rights. That’s still happening.
So I started going with them to the AG’s office, and then to the police, and I’ll say to the officials: “Oh, Excuse me, excuse me, let’s see here, look, touch it: this is your investigation folder, it’s yours, you have the right to access it.”
And I would take the folder, and I would tell [the families]:“look it over, bring a notebook, as if you are keeping a diary, write the date, the day, and all the details about the person you are speaking to.”
When the police investigators saw me putting the folder in the hands of the families, and telling them they have the right to see their files, to ask for the copies they are allowed according to the law, they were reluctant.
“That’s not allowed, I’m just about to go over it,” they would say. And I’d tell them: “Well sir, it’s the family’s right, it’s not up to you. They have the right to do this and that, and why haven’t you granted them a legal assistant? And why haven’t you done this? And why haven’t you done that?”
They don’t like that.
“That is taking power away from the police and the institutions, and giving it to the families. And some of the families have become such powerful self-advocates, and the officials don’t like that.”
DMP: Finally, I wanted to end off asking what happened to Esmeralda Gallardo, a member of the collective who was murdered in October?
MLNB: Well, the situation is extremely difficult. There is no doubt that Esmeralda was killed by the perpetrators [of the disappearance of her daughter], and for her search. She was investigating something that the AG’s office didn’t. That’s the reality.
She became uncomfortable, and the perpetrators killed her. The AG tried to wash its hands saying that it was some kind of revenge killing or something like that.
It’s so easy for them to cast aspersions and divert attention, to generate a distraction and say it was a revenge killing, to suggest that the mother was involved in drug trafficking.
As mothers who are searching, we have to enter hell. We do it because if we have to make a deal with the devil, we’ll do it. Things aren’t working according to legal channels, because they don’t want them to. The law is a tool, but the motivation and the guts to take action is up to each and every one of us. That’s what we do.
Esmeralda touched fire. She touched fire because the AG didn’t do its job. It was like a message: this is what is going to happen if you keep searching. We analyzed it as a collective and we said: “In any case, personally, what do I have left to lose?”
“What I’ve got left is to continue living with dignity, and the only way to carry on with dignity is to continue being in struggle. The crime against my son—which will not see legal justice—will at least see social justice.”
The way I see it, we get a little bit of justice every time we move a case forward.
