María Herrera Magdaleno has been searching for four of her eight children she created a national network of local collectives to teach people how to investigate a loved one’s disappearance she sued the Mexican state in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for its failure to investigate her sons’ disappearances Her leadership in a movement described by Time magazine this month as one “no one wants to join,” earned her a spot on the list of the most influential people of 2023 — alongside the likes of the rich and famous: King Charles III How did a 73-year-old Mexican woman from a small village in Michoacán end up meeting with world leaders taking on her government in international court and on an international magazine’s radar and she is a woman who has the ability to connect to transmit things that are not easy at all,” Montserrat Castillo an activist who has known Herrera for a decade a pueblo located at the northeastern edge of Michoacán as she found herself a single mother raising her eight children and two stepchildren she used that inner strength to start a business selling clothes joined her as the business succeeded and expanded Raúl and José Salvador failed to return from a trip to the neighboring state of Guerrero Herrera told the Times that she felt an overwhelming sadness come over her and she began to cry sensing that “something terrible was happening.” Neither her two sons nor their five other companions on the trip were ever seen again Herrera began a tireless search after a lack of support from local authorities Her efforts eventually took her to Congress in Mexico City where she also filed a complaint in the federal Attorney General’s Office thanks in part to a congresswoman from Guerrero who lent her a car tragedy knocked at her door again: her sons Gustavo disappeared on a business trip to Veracruz a nephew and one of her grandsons also went missing According to information obtained by Herrera and her family all four of her sons’ disappearances were abetted by local police less than a month into the disappearances of Gustavo and Luis Armando the newspaper Excelsior interviewed Herrera “What is our crime?” she asked the reporter led by poet Javier Sicilia – who lost his own son to gang violence “I heard a shivering scream as they yelled at me: ‘You are not alone They said that several times,” Herrera told the Times This sense of connection fueled her to organize conferences where women from all over Mexico learned from anthropologists and forensic experts how to look for signs of disturbed earth that might point to a clandestine grave and how to identify human remains She also approached universities to convince them to teach students how to look for missing people none of the remains she’s discovered have belonged to her sons her work has provided visibility for Mexico’s tragic crisis of disappearances: according to Mexico’s National Search Commission more than 112,000 people are listed as missing in the country And that doesn’t include the doubtless thousands around the country who have never been formally reported missing because of a lack of trust in government agencies Herrera is not planning to quit — neither in the search for her missing relatives nor in helping other Mexicans with missing relatives “A mother’s heart is in each of her children,” she told the Times “Losing them is the worst thing that can happen to you.” With reports from The New York Times, El Financiero and Time ADVERTISE WITH MND COMMUNITY GUIDELINES Subscription FAQ's Privacy Policy Mexico News Daily - Property of Tavana LLC Human rights commission: More than 5,300 people have disappeared in five years Parents band together in their search for answers Missing victims' families are vocal members of a national peace movement Hope that their loved ones may be found alive fuels their fervor '+n.escapeExpression("function"==typeof(o=null!=(o=r(e,"eyebrowText")||(null!=l?r(l,"eyebrowText"):l))?o:n.hooks.helperMissing)?o.call(null!=l?l:n.nullContext||{},{name:"eyebrowText",hash:{},data:t,loc:{start:{line:28,column:63},end:{line:28,column:78}}}):o)+" \n '+(null!=(o=c(e,"if").call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2PreText"):l,{name:"if",hash:{},fn:n.program(32,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:63,column:20},end:{line:63,column:61}}}))?o:"")+"\n"+(null!=(o=(c(e,"ifAll")||l&&c(l,"ifAll")||n.hooks.helperMissing).call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Text"):l,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Link"):l,{name:"ifAll",hash:{},fn:n.program(34,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:64,column:20},end:{line:70,column:30}}}))?o:"")+" Pope Francis met Wednesday with a Michoacán woman whose four sons are among Mexico’s more than 100,000 missing people María Herrera Magdaleno traveled to Vatican City to meet the pontiff on behalf of the large number of Mexicans whose loved ones have disappeared Jesuitas México and the Centro Prodh human rights organization said in a statement that the pope greeted and blessed Herrera a municipality near Michoacán’s border with Jalisco Representatives of those two groups traveled to Rome with the mother of eight Luis Armando and Gustavo have been missing for over a decade “The meeting occurred in the context of Mexico reaching more than 100,000 missing people according to official statistics,” the statement said “In representation of thousands of Mexican families, María Herrera delivered information about this painful reality as well as the forensic backlog of more than 50,000 unidentified bodies and remains the Holy Father blessed all the mothers and families who are looking for their disappeared loved ones.” Jesuitas México and Centro Prodh said the meeting constituted “a call to governments to look for all missing people identify people who still haven’t received a dignified burial due to the forensic crisis and adopt effective public policies to reduce violence.” communities of faith and society to develop greater empathy with the victims of violence,” they said Herrera’s meeting with the pope came after she wrote to him earlier this month and after the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances said in a report that abductions of children adolescents and women are on the rise and that impunity in missing person cases is “almost absolute.” Herrera noted that Mexico’s missing persons count had passed 100,000 and that her four sons were among those whose whereabouts are unknown “In the face of the indifference of our governments mothers have to go out and look [for our children with] our own hands “Pray for us and call on our governments to look for the missing and stop the violence on our pastors to accompany us more and on society to be more empathetic with our pain,” she wrote With reports from El Universal