The discovery of the extermination camp in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, does not represent a turning point in the epidemic of violent deaths and disappearances affecting the most vulnerable population in Mexico. This finding rather highlights a harsh and heart-wrenching reality.
The victims of these crimes are mostly poor young people who are deceived, subjected, kidnapped, and ultimately eliminated or used as pawns in a network of violence perpetuated by impunity. The precariousness in which these people live is the breeding ground for such atrocities to flourish.
In Mexico, the police are usually aware of much more than they communicate, but their incentives are not aligned with protecting those in greatest need. The lack of medications in hospitals, the authorities' inability to detect extermination camps, and the neglect of the missing are part of the sad normality in a country where poverty is a deadly trap.
Not even the rise to power of a group that promised to prioritize the poor has managed to change this situation. Mothers searching for their missing or murdered children still have no answers, and families continue to live in uncertainty and anguish. The promise of change has remained empty words.
The marginalization in which the poorest live makes them easy prey for criminals who operate with impunity. The police, far from protecting the population, often become accomplices of the criminals, leaving the most vulnerable people at the mercy of systemic violence.
Authorities, both locally and nationally, seem determined to maintain the facade that everything is under control, despite overwhelming evidence suggesting otherwise. The missing and murdered are treated as suspects in their own fate, and their families are forced to fight alone for justice in a system that ignores them.
The discovery of 400 shoes in Teuchitlán reveals a sad paradox: the people who ended up in that place were simply seeking a livelihood for themselves and their families, yearning for a better future. The tragedy of this situation reflects the harsh reality of a country where poverty and violence go hand in hand, and where authorities choose to look the other way in the face of the suffering of the most vulnerable.
