The spheres placed in a row in a plaza in Iztacalco, a municipality located southeast of Mexico City, are made of wood and carved by hand.
A path framed by two rows of 500 Christmas balls with the faces of disappeared Mexicans demand that the country’s authorities urgently address this situation for which more than 90,000 people remain unaccounted for.
“This is an act of memory, we know that at this time all families have an empty table, an empty chair, a space that we don’t know how to fill (…) this act of memory is to bring them a little bit to us,” he said. to Efe Tranquilina Hernández, mother of Mireya Montiel, who disappeared in 2014.
In addition, for Hernández, these Christmas spheres are a way of reminding “Mexicans and the authorities that this (the disappearances) is not fictitious, it is real.”
The spheres, placed in a row in the main square of Iztacalco, a municipality located in the southeast of Mexico City, are made of wood and carved by hand, decorated by relatives of the disappeared from different parts of the country.
On the way down the corridor in which they are located, the pedestrian can see their faces and their disappearance dates, a way to remember that these 500 people are only a part of the tens of thousands of disappeared in the country.
Another of the women present at the inauguration of the tribute, Carmela López Arroyo, whose husband disappeared almost a year and a half ago, expressed the urgent need for the authorities to “look at them again.”
“We are many families who are left helpless, sometimes they take away siblings at the head of the house, to children. That (the Mexican authorities) help us at least in the searches in the street, in the field, because we have done that up to now ”, asked López Arroyo.
Amid so much pain, both they and other colleagues were excited to be together around Christmas time to be able to accompany each other “without being judged.”
“We are families of heart, of pain, that is what we have become because we listen to each other. Being here is an achievement at the same time of contentment, of feeling, of seeing each other. Between us we do not feel judged,” Hernández concluded.
Also present at the presentation of the tribute was the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH) Alan García, who insisted on the need to demand that the authorities comply “strictly with their obligations”.
In addition, he stressed the importance of facilities such as the one placed this Tuesday, since opening a public space “is opening a healing space” for relatives, since many disappeared in the streets, in the mountains or in the field.
“The families of missing persons symbolize like no one else in the country the ability to overcome adversity and keep the light of hope alive. The spheres on the Christmas tree symbolize what we long for humanity and the longing for families to reunite with their loved ones, ”García concluded.
Mexico accumulates since 1964, according to data from the National Search Commission (CNB), more than 95,000 missing and non-located people, the vast majority since the beginning of the military war against drug trafficking that began in 2006. (I)
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