Jalisco authorities have taken plenty of slack for their unenthusiastic approach to investigating missing persons cases in the state.
Now law enforcement chiefs believe they have something to crow about. After being roused into action by a social and establishment media frenzy, the state attorney general this week trumpeted the return of a missing 19-year-old Tapatio who appeared safe and sound hundreds of miles from home after a ten-day odyssey through five states.
There is, however, a downside to the happy outcome to the case, say activists who have been urging state authorities to get off their butts and make more strenuous efforts to investigate missing persons. They fear the actions of Gabriel de la Peña, a student who was reported missing on August 20 after failing to turn up to his part-time job, will only reinforce the view taken by authorities that the majority of people who disappear choose to do so of their own free will.
A engineering student at Guadalajara’s Univa University, de la Peña was a happy, well adjusted teenager, his distraught parents told police when he failed to return home.
Perhaps partly because of his age and middle-class status, news of the disappearance spread quickly on radio, television and social media. Posters with de la Peña’s bespectacled image were placed at dozens of strategic points in the metro area. Authorities issued an amber alert, allowing the case to receive wide diffusion in the national media and on the internet.
According to Jalisco Attorney General Eduardo Almageur, three state police units consisting of ten officers were handed the task of investigating.
De la Peña had his left home with less than 100 pesos in his pocket, just enough for his bus fares and lunch, his distraught parents told police and reporters.
A few days after he disappeared, investigators confirmed that calls from the student’s cellphone had been traced to Mazamitla, and later Michoacan.
After consultation with some of his friends and work colleagues, and further investigation by police cybernetics experts, it was revealed that de la Peña had been active on social media in Puebla and the State of Mexico.
Almageur confirmed that he dispatched a team of officers to the State of Mexico to search for de la Peña, but the student decided to contact his mother by telephone before they got there.
Family reasons were at the root of de la Peña’s decision to disappear, Almageur said, although the teen’s father suggested that he probably absconded because he was shamed about his failing grades. (One tongue-in-cheek commentator later wondered why a 19-year-old who was resourceful enough to travel hundreds of kilometers and survive for ten days away from home on less than 100 pesos was unduly concerned about failing grades.)
No action would be taken against de la Peña for wasting police time and resources, Almageur told reporters at a specially convened press conference. He stressed that families have to shoulder responsibility for their offspring, and rued the fact that the many officers involved in the search for the teen could have been better employed in other matters.
Almageur also pointed out that of the 196 people reported missing between July 15 and the end of August, 81 have been located.
The good news for the de la Peña family came on Sunday just hours after several hundred people took part on a march to mark International Day of the Disappeared. A large contingent had worn t-shirts with the message, “Donde Esta Gabo?” (Where is Gabo?), and carried signs with his photograph. Family members of others who have disappeared without a trace also carried posters with images of their loved ones.
According to a spokesperson for the support group Familias Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos Jalisco (FUNDEJ), 2,969 people are reported as missing in this state – the second highest number in Mexico. It is ridiculous to assume that the vast majority of them decided to cut off all communication with their families and friends and vanish into thin air, she said.
Despite assurances from Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval that more will be done to investigate these cases, FUNDEJ says the government is dragging its feet in meeting eight key demands the two sides agreed on back in May. These include giving family members full access to case files, DNA samples, financial transactions and any phone records, as well as a complete revamp of the unit assigned to investigating missing persons in the state.