Dear Debanhi
We failed you dear. I would have liked to know about you in a viral video, meet you at a party or in a journalistic article that will talk about your academic or work achievements and not in a photograph prior to your disappearance in which you are alone on a road, cold, helpless. .
I confess that at night I think of you, of your parents, and I cannot imagine their pain, the uncertainty. Debanhi Susana Escobar Bazaldúa, 18 years old, your name, your physical characteristics resonate in my mind and make me think of the hundreds of disappeared women in the country. What is life like after your absence? How long do you look for someone? When do you lose hope?
Maybe your friends dumped you, at least that’s what we know. The taxi driver who had to take you home. The authorities abandoned you, of course, and society that even after the terror you suffered dared to blame you “for going out at night”, “for not wearing the right clothes”.
It was not your obligation to know that in the section of the highway between Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo in 2021 alone, more than 100 people disappeared; that in Monterrey, the capital where you live in just in the last month eight women like you have not returned home and in Mexico, your country, every day 10 women are murdered.
Your parents have promised to look for you all their lives, the promise will surely be fulfilled, you can be sure of that, your disappearance is a watershed that has to change – now yes – budget priorities, the security that they must offer women, the respect that you deserve and all the others.
We all await your return, which will be a miracle in the face of the lack of answers, in the face of the very harsh history of almost one hundred thousand disappeared in Mexico, of the twenty thousand that have been in this six-year term and the nearly four thousand so far this year that barely It’s been four months.
Even if you return, there is a great possibility that your case will continue to go unpunished, as in 94.8 percent of the cases reported in the country, according to an analysis by México Evalúa.
I wish with all my heart that you return safe and sound that your case be an example of collaboration between prosecutors, civil organization, prayers, whatever, but that your return home is the greatest joy for your parents and friends.