| Desapariciones grupales y de mujeres ponen en la mira a Oaxaca - MSN A estos hechos se sumó la desaparición en Huatulco y Zipolite de nueve jóvenes veinteañeros originarios de Tlaxcala, en los últimos días de febrero. |
Group and women disappearances put Oaxaca in the spotlight
In recent months, the streets of Oaxaca's beaches have ceased to be the "happy, pleasant, and peaceful" destination, according to a survey on tourist perceptions, to become the scene of disappearances, femicides, and murders of human rights defenders. Mixe activist Sandra Domínguez and her husband disappeared from the municipality of San Juan Cotzocón in October 2024. At the beginning of January of this year, 14 men, between the ages of 17 and 44 , also disappeared while traveling to Puerto Escondido, one of the most visited beaches on the Oaxacan coast by tourists. These events were compounded by the disappearance of nine young men in their twenties originally from Tlaxcala in Huatulco and Zipolite in late February. Their bodies were found on the borders of Oaxaca and Puebla.
These are figures that the government is denying.
Desapariciones grupales y de mujeres ponen en la mira a Oaxaca
Group and women disappearances put Oaxaca in the spotlight
The number of disappearances could be much higher. The most violent for defenders is: "I can't return for fear of being physically attacked or disappeared."
Activists in the region believe this southern Mexican state is suffering from a security crisis that has not been acknowledged by the state government. “Unfortunately, Oaxaca is more than just celebration and color. The current situation is extremely alarming,” says Elizabeth Mosqueda, an advocate for the Oaxaca Consortium.
The problem of underreporting
Currently, 746 people are missing and unaccounted for in the state, according to official data. This figure places Oaxaca far behind the states with the most disappearances nationwide. In fact, in 2024, it recorded a decrease in the number of disappearances. However, for human rights defenders and activists, these figures do not match reality. Through press reports, Consorcio Oaxaca has documented the disappearance of 843 women during the current government alone, headed by Morena's Salomón Jara, since the end of 2022. The defender explains that the discrepancy in the figures is due to several factors: the omission of state institutions, the lack of confidence in reporting, and a government tendency to criminalize victims, as has occurred since former PAN president Felipe Calderón began the so-called "war on drugs" in 2006. There is also a national problem of underreporting due to various deficiencies in the prosecutor's offices, adds Fernando Escobar, a researcher at Causa en Común. For example, the monthly crime incidence reports do not make public the figures for victims and investigation files for forced disappearances and disappearances committed by individuals. The association has also detected anomalies in crime records, such as
include intentional homicides in the negligent homicide figures
or cases of kidnapping and disappearance in the categories of
crimes against life and crimes against liberty.
Disappearances in Oaxaca
Oaxaca is going against the grain in the phenomenon of forced disappearances. This crime has increased in Mexico, with notable increases in the last two years, reaching 124,000 missing and unaccounted for people. Between 2023 and 2024, it grew 30% nationwide. In contrast, Oaxaca reported a 38% decrease during that period, the report states.
Names without bodies, bodies without names
, from Causa en Común. Independent records from Consorcio Oaxaca show a contrary trend: 359 disappearances of women in 2023; 370 in 2024 and 86 so far in 2025. “There are more cases of missing women and femicides, but institutions are not responding and we have a very high margin of impunity,” explains Mosqueda. Officially, Oaxaca records more missing women (56%) than men (44%), when the opposite phenomenon occurs nationwide. The state is a red flag for human rights defenders. It is considered
the most violent to carry out this work, with 58 murders in 2023.
The most recent case was that of the defender
Cristino Castro Perea.
And last Tuesday, the Zapotec defender
Silvia Pérez Yescas reported that she has received death threats,
organizations urged the state to protect her. The activist was forced to flee her town in Santa María Lombardo, municipality of San Juan Cotzocón. It is the same region where
Sandra Domínguez,
who also requested security guarantees and reported the harassment against her. It's a reality that has been gradually reaching Oaxaca and is becoming more serious.' Cases of disappearance in Mexico The reality is that there is a dense layer of silence on the part of the authorities
The map of disappearances, femicides, and murders in Oaxaca is embedded in areas of territorial disputes between criminal organizations, attacks by public security forces, and attacks linked to the megaprojects that have been underway in the state since the last six-year term.
Mass disappearances
Cases of group disappearances are now arriving in Oaxaca. The phenomenon is not new, but it was not targeted in this territory. The bodies of the last
Nine young people from Tlaxcala disappeared on the Oaxacan coast
were found inside a car in Puebla. There are still no answers about what happened. State authorities have arrested one person possibly involved and are investigating the alleged involvement of municipal police officers. Of the people who have disappeared in Oaxaca, a greater number were between 15 and 24 years old. Nationally, the disappearances of young people are increasing. Many are forcibly recruited by organized crime through fake job openings that promise high salaries with few requirements, but turn out to be fraudulent and lead the victims into situations of forced recruitment, explains the organization YouthBuild in the report Third Report of Youth Opportunity. The Causa en Común researcher recalls other cases of mass disappearances, detected after finding clandestine graves, in
San Pedro, Coahuila, with 3,000 bone remains
. In Matamoros, Tamaulipas, 500 kilos of human bones were found in 2017. Last year, a mass grave containing 50 bodies was discovered in Hermosillo, Sonora. The recent discoveries of "training and extermination" camps in
Teuchitlán, Jalisco
and Reynosa, Tamaulipas, are now garnering attention due to the magnitude of the horror they have uncovered. In Oaxaca, 49 clandestine graves have been identified, compared to 677 in Jalisco and 554 in Tamaulipas. For Escobar, all these cases demonstrate a constant: "the lack of political will on the part of the Mexican state and a system of impunity that allows disappearances and clandestine graves to become routine." The authorities' inaction also hinders knowing who the people who were located are, she adds, who the perpetrators were, and why such violent acts are being committed in broad daylight. If there is progress and discoveries, it is thanks to the efforts of search groups and families, who analyze clothing and shoes to find a clue, a lead. Or like Sandra Domínguez's mother, who marches to demand justice five months after her daughter's disappearance. "Today, like every day that passes, every minute, I continue searching for you," she declares. One hundred days after her disappearance, her daughter wrote her a letter: “Mom: Today marks 100 days since you were lost, and although time seems to have flown by, not a single day goes by that I don't feel your absence deep within me. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get used to living without seeing you, without hearing your voice, without feeling that hug of yours that gave me so much comfort.”
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