BY EMMANUEL OGBONNA
In the heart of Guadalajara, the faces of the disappeared stare out from nearly every surface.
Thousands of paper flyers blanket the city’s buildings, monuments, lampposts and bus stops. They are taped to parking meters and wrapped around tree trunks. They hang beside basketball courts where teenagers play and line the streets where office workers hurry past each morning. Each one carries a photograph and a plea: “We miss you.” “Have you seen her?” “We’re looking for you.”
In Mexico’s second-largest city, the posters have become part of the landscape — a constant reminder of a crisis that shows no sign of ending.
Guadalajara sits in the state of Jalisco, one of the epicenters of Mexico’s forced disappearance emergency. Official records document roughly 12,500 missing persons in the state alone, placing it among the hardest-hit regions in a country that now counts nearly 131,000 disappeared nationwide — a figure large enough to fill a small city.
The crisis has long been intertwined with the violence of organized crime. Cartels have used disappearances as a tool of terror and control, eliminating rivals, intimidating communities and obscuring homicide statistics. The phenomenon has also come to symbolize deeper structural problems: impunity, corruption and fragile rule of law in parts of the country.
In recent days, Jalisco has been shaken by a surge of violence following the killing of a powerful cartel leader known as “El Mencho.” The unrest has disrupted daily life and complicated efforts by families who search for clandestine graves or comb through remote areas in hopes of recovering remains.
Now, relatives of the missing say they face a new obstacle: what they perceive as efforts by local authorities to reduce the visibility of the posters ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, for which Guadalajara is slated to host matches in June.
“They don’t want people coming to the World Cup, people coming from abroad, to see,” said Carmen López, who is searching for her brother and nephew, each of whom disappeared in separate incidents. “It’s not in their interest. It makes the government look bad in front of the entire world.”
Mexico will co-host the tournament with the United States and Canada, and the event is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors. President Claudia Sheinbaum has insisted there is “no risk” to tourists, even as security concerns intensify in parts of the country.
Behind the public reassurances, however, lawmakers in Jalisco have proposed modifications to legislation originally intended to protect the posters from removal. Families fear the changes would create broad “prohibited” public spaces where the flyers could be taken down without penalty — including public universities, the state legislature, courts, museums and churches.
The proposal is being advanced by state legislator Norma López, a member of Sheinbaum’s Morena party. López has rejected accusations that the bill aims to silence families or sanitize the city before the World Cup.
In an interview, she described criticism from search groups as a misinterpretation and said she shares their pain, noting that one of her own relatives is also missing. The measure, she argued, would not ban posters outright but clarify where they may be removed. “My proposal is not a basis for banning them,” she said. “We are all concerned about what is happening in Jalisco. The disappearances also pain me.”
For families, the distinction offers little comfort.
Héctor Flores, founder of the search collective Luz de Esperanza — Light of Hope — began plastering the city with flyers after his 19-year-old son was forcibly disappeared in 2021 by agents from the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office. A Mexican court later recognized the disappearance, but the ruling did not bring his son home.
Flores’ collective now represents about 500 families. Every weekend, members print and hang between 2,000 and 5,000 flyers. The posters show smiling teenagers, young mothers, fathers and grandparents. Many include identifying details such as tattoos, scars, last-known locations and dates.
“This is an act of searching in real time,” Flores said. “We hope that someone who sees these faces can give us information that helps us locate our families. It’s also an act of visibility.”
The visibility is fragile. Posters are frequently torn down, weathered by rain or removed by authorities. Collectives return again and again to rehang them, transforming the practice into a form of civic resistance.
Families say the recent wave of violence has compounded their difficulties. Some search groups report they have had to suspend planned excavations of suspected clandestine grave sites because federal security forces, which typically provide protection during such operations, are temporarily unavailable due to heightened security demands elsewhere.
Mexico’s National Search Commission did not respond to requests for comment on the suspension of certain search activities.
International sporting events have sharpened scrutiny of Guadalajara’s security environment. A Diving World Cup event scheduled for March in a suburb of the city was recently canceled over safety concerns. Portugal’s national soccer federation said earlier this week it was closely monitoring the situation ahead of a friendly match against Mexico’s team in Mexico City.
Sheinbaum has spoken directly with Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, who expressed confidence in Mexico’s ability to host the tournament.
On the streets of Guadalajara, such diplomatic assurances feel distant. For many residents, the posters have become so ubiquitous that they barely register.
“Now, it’s just normal,” said Jacinto González, 47, as he walked past a wall covered with hundreds of faces. After a pause, he added that his sister-in-law disappeared six years ago.
For families like López’s, normalization is precisely what they fear. She wore a shirt printed with the faces of her missing relatives as she spoke. The posters, she said, may not be aesthetically pleasing, but they are not litter.
“We’re aware that the city doesn’t look beautiful because of the search IDs,” she said. “But what are we supposed to do? We’re doing everything in our power to find them.”
As Guadalajara prepares to welcome the world’s most watched sporting event, the city’s walls tell another story — one of unresolved loss, suspended searches and thousands of unanswered questions that no tournament can erase.
Original article
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