Relatives make painstaking searches for Mexico’s missing

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ
Associated Press

CUAUTLA, Mexico (AP) — Two young volunteers dressed in long sleeves, jeans and face masks dig into the steep side of stream bank reeking of sewage that flows from a shopping center in the central Mexico town of Cuautla. Neither the overpowering stench, the piles of garbage, nor the suffocating heat stop them in their attempt to find the remains of one of the tens of thousands of Mexico’s disappeared. The government’s registry of Mexico’s missing has grown more than 20% in the past year and now approaches 100,000. Activists and experts see little chance that the violence plaguing Mexico for more than a decade will change anytime soon.