From chatbots to mass texts, social media to online guides, tech has transformed the painful hunt that thousands of Mexicans must undertake to find a ransomed relative.
It takes painstaking leg work – grieving mothers knocking door to door with photos and bereft wives scouring mass graves for clues. Now victims of Mexico’s missing persons crisis can also use technology to track down their loved ones.
Giving chase was a lonely task for Torres, who said she felt abandoned by the authorities and sidelined by society. More than 40 collectives – made up of families who have lost a relative – are now using tech to kickstart mass searches and do so within hours of a disappearance to increase life chances.
Instead, the search is mostly pursued by ordinary Mexicans, largely women, who band together to scour the country for illegal mass graves hidden in mountains, wasteland or dry lakes. “In a country with dozens of thousands of missing persons, we assume that everyone knows what to do. The truth is that nobody should know what to do, as the responsibility belongs to the authorities,” María Luisa Aguilar, coordinator at Centro Prodh, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The “No Somos Expedientes” website tells families what they can demand within the first hours of a disappearance, be it official analysis of social media, phone tracking or a review of local CCTV footage. Three other non-profits last year banded together to set up SocorroBot, a WhatsApp chatbot that shows distraught families how to file a missing person report and explains what to do should they come upon corrupt police or military.
Last year, missing teenager Debanhi Escobar went viral after family and friends turned to social media. Following a review of CCTV footage, authorities found the 18-year-old’s beaten corpse in a cistern near where she had last been seen.
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