SEEKING TRUTH AND JUSTICE SHOULD NOT COST US OUR LIVES

[IMAGE: Madres Buscadoras de Sonora]

Women human rights defenders, along with our Peoples, communities and organizations, are organized in different territories to resist the violence that besets us, to protect life and collective well-being, and to build hope and alternatives for a life with dignity. Our sole existence as political subjects challenges the patriarchal mandates that seek to silence the power of women and sex-gender dissidences. The world that we struggle for is diametrically opposed to the one they intend to impose on us and, therefore, our work places the interests of the powerful at risk.

In Mesoamerica, we remain trapped in an economic, political and cultural model inherited from colonial times, which has done nothing more than perpetuate structural oppressions. This system sustains a historical continuity of patriarchal, capitalist and racist violence exerted on women’s bodies and territories. Today, in the midst of a global crisis created by this model of death, our region faces a sharp increase in inequality, poverty, violence and the devastating effects of climate change. The powerholders that profit from this imposed order only know how to respond with repression, force and violence, in a desperate attempt to contain our collective power.

Between 2012 and June 2025, we registered in Mesoamerica 8,454 attacks against women defenders and organizations that exercised and/or demanded the right to truth, justice and reparation. This situation is the consequence of the crisis of violence unleashed in many of our territories due, among other factors, to inequality, femicidal machismo, impunity and the collusion between organized crime and State institutions and corporations.

The large majority of the attacks registered – 82% – were concentrated in the period beginning in 2020, reflecting a worrying escalation in recent years. This places women defenders of truth, justice and reparation as the second group of women defenders who have faced the most violence in the region, accounting for 18% of the total documented attacks (Figure 1).

Women defenders of truth, justice and reparation make up a very diverse group in Mesoamerica, working in different spaces, conditions and organizational structures.

Some of us are mothers, daughters, sisters, wives who – given the ineffectiveness, if not the omission and complicity, of States and their institutions – have been compelled to transform our daily lives and, primarily organized in collectives with others, become women human rights defenders with the aim of beginning the tireless search for our disappeared loved ones and demand justice and reparation for family members or persons in our close circle who have been killed or were victims of femicide, or who are deprived of their liberty and subjected to unjust criminalization processes.

Many others work with organizations to accompany victims of human rights violations; document cases of femicidal violence and other types of abuse; and promote measures to ensure access to truth and processes of memory, accountability, reparation for crimes committed in the present or past, and guarantees of no repetition in the future.

Together, we organize, we embody support, we heal, and we struggle so that human rights violations do not remain in impunity and do not continue to occur.

In a context of widespread violence, strong-handed policies (mano dura), and structural impunity, those of us who defend truth, justice and reparation are attacked precisely because of the leading role we have historically played in the struggle for justice. This path was opened by our sisters who confronted the Dirty War in Mexico, the civil wars in Central America, and the genocide in Guatemala; their legacy continues to be vital for building memory and justice in our countries.

We are also attacked because, beyond being seen as victims or family members of victims, we have emerged as political subjects who challenge the pacts of impunity and the policies of violence and dispossession that powerholders seek to impose in our territories. Our demands are not limited to justice in individual cases; we collectively denounce the complicity of State and non-State actors in the reproduction of this system of impunity.

They attack us because, by defending these rights, we expose the cruelty of necrocapitalism sustained by States that are co-opted by oligarchies and criminal groups that have turned justice systems into instruments for protecting private interests and perpetuating the business of violence.

MEXICO

In Mexico, the December 2010 assassination of Marisela Escobedo in the state of Chihuahua, which occurred while she was demanding justice for the femicide of her daughter Rubí Frayre Escobedo, marked a painful milestone in the struggle against impunity. Since then, we have registered 1,729 attacks against women defenders and organizations that, in their search for justice, confront sexist, racist and classist courts that frequently collude with organized crime.

Mexico is the country with the highest number of disappeared persons in the continent. According to the National Registry of Disappeared Persons, 131,991 persons were officially registered as disappeared and unaccounted for as of 7 August 2025. Given the ineffectiveness, omissions, and – at times – collusion of State authorities with organized crime, these mothers, daughters, sisters have organized themselves in searching collectives and transformed their life projects in order to seek truth and justice in hostile territories. Thus, they become “searchers” – buscadoras as they define themselves – who, in addition to denouncing and making demands of State authorities, carry out the work of investigating and searching on the ground, with scarce resources and insufficient protection measures, in territories frequently controlled by organized crime. The discovery of an extermination camp operated by organized crime in Teuchitlán, Jalisco – the existence of which the searching collectives had been raising alarm about for some time – is an example of this. 

In this context, the collectives that search for disappeared persons face a grave reality of attacks due to their role and their increasingly organized strength demanding justice, searching for family members, demanding their return alive, and demanding that the State comply with its duty to search for the disappeared. In recent years, we have observed an increase in the number and severity of attacks against women searching for disappeared persons, particularly in Mexico City, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Quintano Roo, Morelos, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Michoacán and Oaxaca.

Between 2020 and the first half of 2025, we registered 1,495 attacks against women defenders of the right to truth and justice in Mexico, including the femicide of 15 searchers who participated in various collectives searching for disappeared family members. This means that one out of every three women defenders killed in Mexico during the period was a searching woman defender. Additionally, we documented other types of attacks against this group of defenders, including stalking, surveillance, death threats, physical assaults and disappearances.

These attacks have had devastating impacts on their lives, and the lives of their families and communities. The traumatic impact of the forced disappearance of their loved ones, added to the violence and threats they face due to their search, results in a significant deterioration of their physical and emotional health. The work of searching also affects the family, community and economic life of women defenders, since they often face stigma, they are forced to leave their jobs or use their own resources to carry on with the task. Furthermore, fear and physical and emotional exhaustion threaten the continuity of collective organization processes that are essential in order to confront structural violence and impunity in the territories.

NICARAGUA

In Nicaragua, since the beginning of the socio-political crisis in 2018, a primary demand has been of justice for the victims of State repression. Thus, women human rights defenders – many of whom are victims or family members of victims – have organized themselves to denounce the truth and demand justice and reparation given the continued violence whose forms of attack have become increasingly diversified.

Between 2018 and the first half 2025, we registered 3,802 attacks against women defenders and organizations that defend the right to truth, justice and reparation; accounting for 28% of attacks registered in Nicaragua during the period. The forms of attack registered included systematic harassment; surveillance of homes; infringement of the right to free movement; and arbitrary detentions coupled with forced disappearance by concealing whereabouts, cruel and inhuman treatment, and torture. The actors responsible for these attacks are linked to the dynastic totalitarian State led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo: the National Police, parapolice forces, authorities from public institutions like the Ministry of Interior, and neighborhood structures affiliated with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The Mothers of April Association (AMA) is a key entity that emerged in the context of the socio-political and human rights crisis that the country is going through. It was formed in grief, when mothers and immediate family members of victims killed during the repression that began in April 2018 came together and organized themselves to demand memory, truth, justice, and non-repetition of the crimes against humanity committed primarily by police and parapolice forces. With the conviction that justice and the uncovering of the truth cannot be postponed until a future transition, they are a collective body that does not give up: they struggle against impunity, vindicate the memory of their family members, and counter the official narrative that criminalizes those who participated in the protests. Between 2020 and the first half of 2025, we registered 297 attacks against family members organized within AMA, including surveillance, harassment, raids and arbitrary detentions. Most of the documented attacks occurred on commemorative dates, preventing them, among other, from carrying out activities to mourn for their family members. Since 2018, the regime of terror imposed in the country has not stopped expanding its reach, extending the violence beyond direct victims to attack their families. This pattern has systematically affected family members of persons who were killed, those held as political prisoners, disappeared and forced into exile – thus revealing a sustained strategy of repression that goes through multiple stages. Attacks on families are not isolated cases, but rather a mechanism that aims to further social control, discourage the search for justice, and break the community fabric that supports victims.

Faced with the severity and systematic nature of the attacks, many women defenders of memory, truth and justice in Nicaragua were forced to leave their communities or go into exile. This has profoundly affected their life projects and those of their families, weakening their support networks and threatening the organizational processes they belong to. However, despite exile and the adverse context, hundreds of Nicaraguan women defenders continue to struggle collectively with strength and courage against impunity, building paths for justice based on memory and exposing the truth.

HONDURAS

Between 2012 and the first half of 2025, we registered 834 attacks against women defenders of truth, justice and reparation in Honduras.

These attacks are interconnected with other struggles, such as defending the right to a life free from violence and defending land and territory. We registered systematic attacks and repression using bullets and teargas against family members of Keyla Martínez and other sister defenders who demanded justice for the femicide of the young nurse that took place in 2020 while she was arbitrarily detained in a police station in La Esperanza, Intibucá.

We also documented systematic attacks against the Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), Berta Cáceres’ family members, and other women defenders, journalists and organizations who demand justice regarding the 2016 assassination of the Lenca woman defender. Furthermore, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) and Garífuna communities have been systematically targeted with attacks – including forced disappearances and killings – when demanding compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights rulings regarding the communities of Punta Piedra and Triunfo de la Cruz, and demanding truth and justice for the four young community members of Triunfo de la Cruz who were forcibly disappeared in June 2020.

GUATEMALA

In Guatemala, attacks on women defenders of justice, truth and reparation registered by UDEFEGUA account for 41% of all attacks documented between 2012 and 2022. Just in 2022, 1,400 attacks were registered against women defenders of these rights.

Among the strategies used in Guatemala to attack women defenders of the right to truth and justice, standing out are smear campaigns, defamation, criminalization and persecution. In recent years, many of these actions have targeted the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and its members, as well as justice system personnel who have fought against corruption and impunity.

It is also important to highlight the attacks against women defenders who organized to seek justice for the girls killed in the 8 March 2017 massacre at the Virgen de la Asuncion children’s home in Guatemala, when 41 girls and adolescents were killed and another 15 were left with permanent injuries while under the protection of the State. Family members of the victims, along with the 56 Hurt Us collective and the 8 Tijax collective, led the filing of complaints in the courts. The women defenders who participated in the legal process against the public officials responsible for the events have been persecuted, intimidated, and threatened with death. Two of the mothers who demanded justice for their daughters’ deaths were violently killed by unknown assailants: Gloria Perez y Perez, along with her 13-year-old daughter Nury Leon Perez, in 2018; and Maria Elizabeth Ramirez in 2021. Recently, on 12 August 2025, six former public officials in Guatemala were found guilty of child abuse, dereliction of duty, abuse of authority and manslaughter, and were given prison sentences ranging from 6 to 25 years.

EL SALVADOR

We registered 184 attacks against women defenders of truth and justice in El Salvador between 2012 and the first half of 2025. Three out of every four attacks were perpetrated in the last two years, in the context of the state of emergency in force since March 2022. Standing out are attacks committed online and through social media, such as smear campaigns full of misogynist contents, ridiculing women defenders and spreading fake news in order to stigmatize their struggles. We found that these attacks, frequently perpetrated by public officials, are not isolated incidents but rather a strategy that is linked to implementing the techno-capitalist political-economic project in the country. The campaigns seek to impose narratives of “zero crime”, legitimizing strong-handed policies (mano dura) and discrediting the work of women searchers and their collectives that seek to learn the truth and find justice for their loved ones.

We have also documented incidents such as the arbitrary detention and prosecution of women searching for disappeared persons (as in the case of Verónica Delgado), carried out under the state of emergency and the arbitrary measures it encourages, based on mere assumptions or outright false accusations. In this context, while justice systems are extremely agile in protecting the official discourse and the interests of de facto powers, they are incapable of guaranteeing justice for the victims of violence.

Throughout these more than ten years, the record of attacks against women defenders of the right to truth and justice in El Salvador has not lacked those targeting women defenders and organizations working to preserve the historical memory of the civil war that ravaged the country in the 1980s, connected to cases such as El Mozote massacre or the raids and removal of material and information from the offices of organizations like the “Madeleine Lagadec” Center for Human Rights Promotion and CO-MADRES.

On 16 December 2010, woman defender Marisela Escobedo was standing outside the Chihuahua State Government Palace, in front of the “NOT ONE MORE” Cross of Nails – a memorial to women who were disappeared and those who were victims of femicide in Ciudad Juárez – when a man approached her and shot her in the head, killing her. Marisela was there demonstrating to demand justice for the femicide of her daughter, Rubí Marisol Frayre Escobedo, whose confessed killer had been freed.

Rubí, who was 16 years old and mother to a daughter, was killed by her partner, Sergio Rafael Barraza, in August 2008. After killing her, he put the body in a drum and burned it through to the bones, hoping no one would find it. The investigations were finally able to identify Sergio Rafael as responsible for the crime and he was put on trial. However, despite confessing to killing the young woman, even asking Marisela for forgiveness at the end of the trial, and that witnesses spoke against him, a jury acquitted him because the prosecutors and the public ministry failed to provide enough proof for his conviction.

At that moment, Marisela began a tireless struggle to end the impunity surrounding the femicide of her daughter. She traveled to different states throughout Mexico, sharing her story and demands for justice, appearing before multiple media outlets; her case transcended national borders. She even traveled to Zacatecas, where her daughter’s murderer had taken refuge and where she was informed that he was part of Los Zetas, an organized crime group that at that time was spreading terror throughout much of the country. She finally managed to get a court to overturn the acquittal and find Sergio Rafael Barraza guilty, but he was already a fugitive.

Regarding the investigation of Marisela’s murder, a suspect was detained but it was eventually shown that he was not involved in the crime. However, everything indicated that the person responsible was Sergio Rafael Barraza. In November 2012, he was killed by army personnel during an operation, but he never appeared before a court of justice for the femicide of Rubí or for Marisela.

Marisela’s murder shocked the entire country and had repercussions beyond its borders, with expressions of solidarity and condemnation coming from various parts of the world. It also marked a before and after in the recent history of Mexico, a country with the highest number of disappeared persons in the world and painfully high rates of femicide; a country where – in the face of impunity, omission, complicity, or the inability of public institutions – thousands of mothers have followed Marisela’s example of courage and dignity and have become women defenders of the right to truth, justice and reparation, searching – most often organized with others in collectives – for their daughters and sons.

The case of Marisela Escobedo was also an important landmark because it exposed the situation of insecurity and vulnerability that women human rights defenders were experiencing in Mexico and throughout the region, and it highlighted the need for more effective protection measures, with a gender perspective and a more holistic approach to our security and our work.

On 2 May 2023, woman defender Teresa Magueyal was riding her bicycle in front of a pre-school in San Miguel Octopan – the city where she lived – in the Northeast of the municipality of Celaya, state of Guanajuato, when at least four armed men got out of a car, came towards her and shot her dead. Teresa’s was the sixth killing of a woman defender of the right to truth, justice and reparation in the state of Guanajuato since 2020. She was also the eighth searching mother killed in Mexico since that same year.

Doña Tere, as she was known, became a searching mother three years prior to her murder, after her 31-year-old son José Luis Apaseo Magueyal, was disappeared on 6 April 2020 in the municipality of Celaya, when he left the family home and never returned. From that moment, she had not stopped looking for him, and to that end, she organized the collective “A Promise to Fulfill” along with other searching mothers from the Laja-Bajío area. The collective is based in Celaya and shares the same goal as countless other search collectives throughout the country: to continue searching for their loved ones in the face of omission, complicity, or negligence on the part of the authorities who should take responsibility for the search and guarantee the safety of those who make up these collectives.

According to her sisters from the collective, Doña Tere was a very active member, participating in search brigades, training other searching mothers, and appearing before the authorities. Additionally, as is the case for many searching mothers, Doña Tere also had to take over caring for her granddaughter, José Luis’ daughter, who suffered the same painful loss as her grandmother after her father’s disappearance.

According to the National Registry of Disappeared Persons (RNPDNO), 2,968 people have disappeared in Guanajuato from 12 June 1921 to 8 May 2023. José Luis was one of them. However, the figures from RNPDNO highlight a significant fact: disappearances rose steeply starting in 2006, when then President Felipe Calderón declared the “War on Drugs”, favoring some criminal groups over others and plunging the entire country into a spiral of brutality and violence whose effects continue to this day.

Guanajuato is one of the states that suffers most from the consequences of this “war on drugs.” Adding to the exponential increase in the number of disappeared persons are the high homicide rates. According to the Journalism and Public Opinion Lab, the state has ranked among the highest in the country in terms of homicides since 2015. Between October 2018 and March 2023 alone, Guanajuato recorded 18,732 homicides. Data from the Lab also show that up to 2023, more than two hundred secret mass graves had been found in the state. It is important to note that many of these graves were identified thanks to the tireless work of searching collectives like the one in which Doña Tere participated.

The killings of searching mothers not only seek to silence their voices and stop their work; they also seek to kill the hope of those who, after the disappearance of a loved one, make sense of their lives collectively nourishing and caring for this hope. Women who never stop demanding justice; who hold demonstrations; file complaints with authorities; participate in searching brigades that cover roads, empty lots, wooded areas and hills, risking their lives by entering territories controled by organized crime. This is why everyone has the duty to keep that hope alive by recognizing the invaluable contribution and example of dignity set by women like Teresa Magueyal, Doña Tere, and join her sister defenders in continuing to demand justice for her and for all the searching mothers who have been killed.

Our sister Berta Cáceres, coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and member of the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras, was killed on 2 March 2016 by hitmen answering to the oligarchy and corporate interests due to her defence of the Gualcarque River against DESA corporation’s project to build a hydroelectric dam. We described the circumstances regarding her killing in a prior supplement, “THE LAND BELONGS TO THOSE WHO WORK IT AND DEFEND IT. 10+ years of attacks against women defenders of land, territory and the environment (2012-2024)”.

Berta was killed, above all, because she was a Lenca woman, a feminist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist fighter whose struggle had received attention both inside and outside Honduras, and this made her an example for many other women, human rights defenders, organizations and communities. And so, by killing Berta, the powerholders who impose and sustain the policies of death and dispossession that reign in Honduras not only sought to silence her personal struggle, and that of COPINH, but also to send a message to other women defenders, organizations and social movements in the country about what could happen to those who dare to confront them.

For this reason, after her assassination, a new struggle started for COPINH and for organized peoples in Honduras; a struggle as important as the struggle to defend the Gualcarque River; a struggle whose political relevance goes beyond merely determining who was responsible for the crime. It has entailed responding to power with a counter-message that Berta’s killing will not remain in impunity, that all those responsible – from the material to the intellectual authors as well as the economic, political and corporate interests to whom they answer – would be exposed, identified and subjected to a comprehensive and reparatory justice of the people.

In response, powerholders have continued to act as expected – mobilizing their entire arsenal of resources, influence, corrupt maneuvers and criminal force to adulterate, obstruct and prolong the justice process. Accordingly, since 2016, Berta Cáceres’ family and COPINH, as well as journalists and allied organizations, have faced numerous attacks of different types and severity carried out by different actors in the context of their search for justice.

One of the first attacks took place just a few days after the crime, when DESA employees attacked COPINH members and other solidarity organizations that were participating in the Berta Cáceres Vive camp. The most recent, in June 2025, was a leak of confidential information about the protection measures for the organization and family members of Berta Cáceres. Meanwhile, delay tactics have been deployed, along with police surveillance and harassment of members of COPINH and of the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders who were participating in a demonstration to demand justice; the fire at the Viva Berta Feminist Camp by supporters of the National Party, the same camp that had been repeatedly harassed by the police; and the ejection of Berta’s family from a hearing concerning one of the defendants, David Castillo – the DESA General Manager who undeniably draws the link to those whom COPINH has identified as the main masterminds behind the crime: the Atala family. Other attacks have included campaigns of threats and harassment against COPINH and its leaders; attacks against journalists, such as the accusations and defamation against British journalist Nina Lakhani, author of an investigation into the crime; and against international organizations such as Global Witness and national feminist organizations such as CEM-H, which the DESA company attempted to criminalize.

These are just some of the many attacks and violations of due process that have been committed, largely with the aim of preventing the justice system from reaching the top of the pyramid of those responsible for the crime, among whom are the Atala family – an oligarchy that wields enormous economic and political power in the country – and other responsible parties such as European banks which, despite being warned of human rights violations in the region where the project is located, did nothing to stop them.

Nevertheless, the process of justice led by COPINH and Berta’s family, with the support of the international solidarity networks they have built, has continued to move forward: from the convictions of the perpetrators of the crime and of David Castillo, one of its masterminds, to closing in on the Atalas, which is why one of the main suspects, Daniel Atala, is currently a fugitive. The recent creation of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) in Honduras on 14 February 2025 is the latest result of this tireless work.

On 18 July 2020, persons wearing uniforms of the General Directorate of Investigations (DPI) stormed into the Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, Tela, in the department of Atlantida, and took away the president of the community board, Alberth Sneider Centeno, along with three other young people from the community – Miltón Joel Martínez Álvarez, Suami Aparicio Mejía García and Gerardo Misael Trochez Calix. Since that day, the four remain disappeared.

The community of Triunfo de la Cruz is emblematic of the struggles led by the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) and of the Garífuna Peoples of Honduras. Since 2015, this community – along with the communities of San Juan and Punta Piedra – holds a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, with which the State is obliged to comply, that recognizes the legitimate right of these communities to their ancestral territory and calls for its restitution. In fact, one of the main functions of the community board chaired by Sneider Centeno (one of the young victims of forced disappearance) is to ensure compliance with that ruling.

Since July 2020, the community of Triunfo de la Cruz and OFRANEH have been pursuing justice on two counts: regarding the yet-to-be-fulfilled ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as the forced disappearance of the board president and the other three young people. Given the State’s omission and failure to comply with both obligations, OFRANEH – with the support and accompaniment of other national and international organizations – has promoted the creation of entities such as the Committee for the Investigation and Search for the Disappeared of Triunfo de la Cruz (SUNLA) and the High-Level Intersectoral Commission for Compliance with International Judgments (CIANCSI), whose work and contributions have also been systematically ignored and obstructed by the State, which has not even fulfilled its duty to guarantee the safety and protection of members of the community and of OFRANEH.

Thus, throughout all these years, despite international pressure and urging from international bodies like the Inter-American Commission and the United Nations, attacks against members of the Triunfo de la Cruz community and OFRANEH leaders – far from ceasing – have multiplied and intensified. Attacks against the community vary greatly in nature and severity, ranging from repression of protest; attempted evictions; attempts to impede peaceful marches, acts of intimidation, harassment, and threats; and strategies to impose parallel boards; all the way to the 2023 killing of Ricardo Arnaul Montero and Martín Morales, leaders involved in the demand for compliance with the Triunfo de la Cruz ruling. In the context of the demand for justice for the four disappeared Garífuna young people, leaders from SUNLA and OFRANEH have faced criminalization for participating in peaceful protests, including our sister Miriam Miranda, OFRANEH coordinator and member of the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras, who has also been subjected to intimidation and threats for denouncing the constant violence that the community experiences.

A holistic approach to justice shows how the demand for compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling regarding Triunfo de la Cruz is inseparable from the demands for truth regarding the disappearance of the four Garífuna young people, for restitution of ancestral lands, and for an end to violence against the community and the impunity that continues to surround these attacks. The struggle of the Triunfo de la Cruz community is vital for OFRANEH and for the Garífuna Peoples of Honduras, who continue to be persecuted and attacked throughout the country due to structural racism and the capitalist dispossession policies that continue to be imposed by governments, State institutions, local caciques, companies, and organized crime groups.

Woman defender Eneida Abarca’s son, Carlos Santos, was 22 years old on the first of January 2022, when he was seen for the last time in the neighborhood of Monserrat’s Lito Barriento park, behind a police station. Carlos remains disappeared since then and Eneida, who lived a stable life with her work and daily activities, dropped everything to dedicate all her time to searching for him. In this process, Eneida, together with her sister Ivette, has tirelessly searched streets, highways, parks, vacant lots, and ravines; she has turned to government agencies, staged sit-ins at traffic lights, participated in marches, organized with other mothers to embrace each other and search together, and filled San Salvador with photographs of her son and a single question for which she continues to seek an answer: “Where is Carlos?”

After three years, all legal avenues have been exhausted; the complaints filed with the police and the investigation opened by the prosecutor’s office have not yielded any results. Instead of fulfilling their duty to investigate Carlos’ whereabouts with all means at their disposal, State institutions have proven themselves negligent; they have ignored Eneida’s just demand for truth, offering evasive answers or false and revictimizing assumptions, and attempting to silence her voice on social media, where she has been blocked by institutional accounts and prominent government authorities. They have gone so far as to obstruct her search efforts with acts of intimidation and harassment by police and military personnel during actions she has organized along with her family, and when she has participated in collective actions such as the 8 March demonstration.

Furthermore, like other searching mothers in El Salvador, Eneida has been the target of various attacks on social media and messaging platforms, questioning her search efforts and revictimizing both her and her son through defamatory and stigmatizing comments that are often charged with misogyny.

Carlos Santos, Eneida’s son, is one of nearly 2,400 people – mostly young people – who disappeared in El Salvador between 2020 and 2022. Carlos disappeared just three months before the state of emergency was imposed, a regime that had militarized the country and continues to this day, and under which the State no longer publishes official figures on disappearances.

No omission, silencing strategy, or fabrication of fake news can hide the pain, dignity, and determination; the right to know the truth and demand justice; and the tireless work of the searching mothers who, like Eneida, will not stop until they know the truth about their sons and daughters and until they achieve justice for their cases. They are attacked because their very existence is an open wound in the narrative that those in power seek to impose, proof that not everything in the country is as idyllic as they would have us believe. Perhaps it is time for the State to understand that neither Eneida nor any of the searching mothers are its enemies; that they are not seeking power, influence, or positions of authority; they only want answers, a glimmer of hope, compassion, and justice. Above all, they suggest that listening to their voices and addressing their demands is possibly the safest, most humane, and most effective way to ensure that these narratives will one day cease to be an empty propaganda campaign and instead become an objective truth.

Eneida’s dignified and tireless struggle is the struggle of many other mothers in Mesoamerica, it is the struggle of us all. This is why we join her in speaking loud: “Carlos listen, your mother is in the struggle”.

The life and daily routine of Salvadorean woman defender Verónica Delgado were turned upside down on 26 May 2022, when her 17-year-old daughter, Paola Jimena Arana, disappeared after going to a medical appointment. From that day on, Verónica had to care for her four-year-old granddaughter, Valentina, while also embarking on a tireless search for Paola, which led her to join the group of mothers organized in the “Searching Block”.

On 11 March 2024, two days after participating in the International Women’s Day march in San Salvador alongside other members of the “Searching Block” with photographs of their disappeared family members, Verónica was finishing washing clothes when a National Civil Police officer who had entered through the back of the house shouted at her, “We have been notified that marijuana is being sold here. Open the gate, my fellow officers are waiting outside.”

The agents found no evidence of this accusation when they searched the house. Still, they took her into custody, claiming that the small amount of money found in her eldest daughter’s room, which she had earned working at a call center, was the proceeds from the sale of these substances. During the search, Verónica had to endure cruel comments from the agents, such as “why are you still looking for your daughter, when she is surely already dead?” or, when she expressed concern for her granddaughter, “don’t cry for the girl, she’s not yours. That girl is not even your daughter.”

On Friday, 22 March, ten days after her arrest, after confirming her indictment for an alleged crime of “unlawful association”, the judge granted her provisional release with alternative measures. However, her imprisonment was unjustifiably prolonged until 3 May, when she was finally able to return home and care for her granddaughter.

All of this took place within the context of the state of emergency imposed by the government of El Salvador since March 2022, which allows security forces and judicial institutions to act with complete arbitrariness. During the twenty days she spent in the Apanteos women’s prison, Verónica witnessed the precarious and inhumane conditions in which women prisoners live, crammed into cells, sharing beds, with unsanitary food. Many, like her, had also been deprived of their liberty under a regime that restricts freedoms.

Verónica’s case reveals the risk that many women and women human rights defenders face under the current state of emergency – the possibility of being arbitrarily criminalized based on mere assumptions or outright false accusations. It also underscores the State’s desire to render invisible the struggle of mothers searching for truth and justice, who expose the numbers of disappearances and femicides with which it seeks to support its narrative of “zero crime.”

In November 2024, Verónica received the Right to Defend Rights National Award, given to women defenders for “the important impact in the territories, their work as caregivers for those who cannot raise their voices, and their work searching for their disappeared sons and daughters and for people deprived of liberty.” Nevertheless, at the time of publishing this report, the criminal proceedings against her remain open, posing a constant threat to her work and prolonging the uncertainty and impact that this situation has on her life and her close circle.