Bring a photo, try to find it, don’t you think she left with her boyfriend? Maybe she didn’t want to be with you anymore. So are the young. Wait a little longer. Go back to your house, sure he talks to you. Did she ask her friends? Did she try to get into her Facebook? Was she on drugs? Has she already spent more time? Has it been two days, three, a week? We ask that whatever you do, do not talk to the media, they will hinder the investigation.
I have heard this last sentence dozens of times, relatives of disappeared women whom the prosecution asked, please, not to speak to the media. Many decide to pay attention, they have all their hopes pinned on the “authorities” who pretend to be working. Others get tired of waiting and bravely, fearing that this could play against them, decide to tell us their story.
Why in a country where women are missing and murdered daily, are we all talking about Debanhi? There are three factors that I believe have made that story so widely covered: Debanhi’s chilling last photo by the side of the road, the “girlfriends” story that caused her to garner massive attention on social media, and a desperate father. (as would anyone in his place) who did not stop searching, nor giving each and every one of the interviews that they asked for. When the media turns around, the authorities do what they seldom do: their job. Debanhi’s father told a story that is rarely seen in relatives, he did believe that the prosecution was doing his job. The governor talked to him every day, they showed him videos, he could review them, go back to the place, ask questions, help with the investigation, everything. Until the body appeared, in the place where they searched several times. The next morning, in an interview for DPC, Mario told us: it’s my fault, for having believed that the prosecution was doing his job.
All search groups, and relatives of victims, know that the authorities do not do much, either due to laziness, incapacity, because they are overwhelmed or a good combination of the three. If the pressure of the media sometimes helps to mobilize the authorities, how many hours of radio, television and pages of the press would we need to hear the stories of all the women who disappear every day? How many extra hours a day does the governor of Nuevo León, or of any state, need to personally attend to all the relatives? How much longer are we going to continue to see them apply measures when the women are not around? Who is going to create a prevention strategy? Who will have their eyes on a possible better future?
“Those of us who are here meet every day and receive the part of what is happening, and fortunately in the last report, this was reported by the secretary, we already had a decrease in femicides. Won’t you put the graph? López Obrador, April 22, 2022. The data is false, femicides are not going down, and meeting every morning to count dead women is not a strategy. But nothing happens, as long as you don’t talk to the media.
Mexican journalist, host, broadcaster, writer and communicator
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Mexican journalist, host, announcer, writer and communicator. She hosts the program “A Todo Terreno” on MVS Radio. She has written for various publications and worked in different spaces on radio and television.