Mexico: The Disappeared

More than 130,000 people have vanished in Mexico, a crisis fueled by cartel violence, official corruption, and a near-total impunity that lets the disappearances continue. For the families left behind, the search often falls to them alone.

Mexico: The Disappeared follows Lucy Diaz, a mother searching for her missing son in the state of Veracruz. When local authorities failed to look, she organized a group of mothers who took up the work themselves, walking the countryside and excavating clandestine mass graves in search of the children the state would not find for them. The story moves alongside these women as they do what no one else would, turning private grief into a collective act of defiance.

The reporting gives a human measure to a national catastrophe, following the people who refuse to stop searching even when the institutions meant to look away.