43C (110F) An Exhumation And A Party

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

This is officially the worst time of year to be in northern Mexico.

I just got back from a quick run to the VW dealer and a stop at Costco, and the car's digital thermometer read a staggering 43°C (109.7°F). It is pretty dang hot out there.

You might be wondering why on earth we are sticking around in this baking heat when we could be relaxing in San Miguel de Allende. Today's high in SMA was a beautiful 28°C (82.4°F), dropping to a crisp 13°C (55°F) tonight. Trust me, we want to be there! But we have a mountain of projects and life events that absolutely must get done before our departure date on August 4th.

We currently have two albañiles (construction workers) at the house doing repair work. Honestly, I can’t believe they pushed through the heat today. They arrived at 9:00 AM, stopped for a couple of morning tacos at 10:00, and just kept hammering away.

Later, I ran out to Santiago for supplies. When I returned, they were taking a break, so I asked if they could shift their schedule—maybe work from 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Most areas of our yard are beautifully shaded and cool in the early morning.

Their response? Nope. They just don’t roll like that!

Right now, they are patching cracks on the interior side of the front street wall and on the back wall that abuts our rear neighbor. They also tore down the old remaining chainlink fence from our side neighbor's border. It was completely hidden behind a row of ficus trees and had become a massive trap for dead leaves over the years. Our gardener should be thrilled; he can finally clear that area out. Next up on their list: caulking around the base of the house, painting the front well, and tackling a few other lingering details.

We had a wonderful visit last weekend with guests who were our neighbors over 40 years ago. They were the ones who warmly embraced us when we first moved into the neighborhood. We were all so young then—none of us even had kids yet!

Fast forward to today: their oldest is now 40, and she actually came along with her parents. We enjoyed a fantastic breakfast in Santiago and spent the afternoon catching up at the house. They live about 65 km away now, so we don't see each other often enough, but it was a beautiful day, and we hope to do it again soon.

Next weekend will look entirely different. We will be serving as official witnesses for an exhumation.

Juan’s brother-in-law passed away seven years ago (his wife, Juan's sister, had passed away several years before him). We are going to cremate his remains to make room in the family plot and put the cremated remains in the church niche where his mother and one of his nieces rest. The niece was tragically hit by a car in Dallas several years ago—a truly heartbreaking event.

In Mexico, embalming is typically only for three days and there are no concrete crypts, so the law permits exhumation after seven years. Even so, you never quite know what you will find. It depends heavily on water intrusion, humidity, and changing weather conditions over the years. It will be a very small, quiet group of us witnessing the process.

On August 1st, we are hosting a reunion party for the ex-members of our folkloric dance group. This gathering used to be a lively pool party for the kids. Well, those kids are all grown up now and have kids of their own! We aren't entirely sure how many people will show up, but it's nice to get the house in order for it.

Right after that, we are officially escaping to San Miguel de Allende. We will be spending several weeks there until our roof terrace is fully tiled. Absolutely NO exceptions this time!

In the middle of all this coordination, we are waiting for a response from RVShare (the private RV rental site). The rig I chose is very close in length and weight to the trailer we eventually want to buy. I really hope the rental goes through so we can test the waters before making a massive purchase.

For the towing setup, I’ve decided on a Curt Bluetooth brake controller. It plugs directly into the vehicle's 7-pin connector, the trailer plugs into the unit, and you use your phone app to calibrate it. The VW Atlas seems to really like the Curt brand.

I've read quite a bit about it; while some users report minor glitches, the unit securely holds your last programmed setting if you lose the Bluetooth signal. A lot of people shy away from the Bluetooth version because they hate dealing with app tech, opting instead for the old-fashioned, dash-mounted controllers that plug straight into the VW connector under the dash. But for this trip, I'm leaning toward the wireless route. 

One good thing this week is the sentencing of El Mayo.  Life in prison and he has accepted that.  Now they've got to extradite the governors that are accused of acting alongside of them.  The president insists that the U.S. has no proof.  

The president also has denied help to the madres buscadores who are looking for bodies buried throughout the country.  At one point, the secretary of the interior said that the opposition parties were secretly aiding the madres buscadores in forming marches and demonstrations by paying for transportation, meals, and housing.  

She should know all about that.  The Morena party is well-known for acarreados (moving masses of people via private transport for demonstrations).  However, for the massive groups in Mexico City, they provide the free transport, tortas, a Frutsy, and 500 pesos, although they publicly admit it.  People will sell their soul for so little.

That's it for now but if the forecast above is real, we will have a nice rain on Friday.  Keep cool wherever you are.

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What Is The Approach To Find The 130,000 Missing Or Dead

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

I have been following the many groups of madres buscadoras (groups of women looking for their missing and dead children and spouses).  There are currently 230 groups working in Mexico.  That should give you an idea of how big this problem is. 

How many of you have children or grandchildren who are graduating in the last weeks of June or the beginning of July?  I ask because from Thursday to today (Saturday)  there have been six unrelated kidnappings of graduates on vacation or in their cities.  The situation has become desperate.  Organized crime is looking for younger, healthier, and educated recruits to do their dirty work, sex trafficking, and organ harvesting.

There are 40 people in this photograph holding a picture of their missing family member.  Multiply this picture times 3250, and that gives the magnitude of this tragedy.

Imagine if this were to happen in your family?  I put AI to work regarding the madres buscadoras, and this is what I found.  It is concurrent with my own research, albeit more in-depth.  My issue is that the government's methods for searching and returning bodies or remains, in most cases, have had little to no results.  In fact, the madres buscadoras were invited to work around the area that encompasses the investigation into the kidnapping and death of Nancy Guthrie because they have become very good at finding bodies.

The government conducts field searches, but they operate differently than the collectives of "searching mothers." While families often head into the field motivated by anonymous tips and using their own resources, authorities follow a legal and inter-institutional protocol. The work of the National Search Commission (CNB) and local commissions in the field is structured around the following dynamics: coordinated field searches and use of specialists, unlike families who use improvised tools like "T-rods". Official brigades include archaeologists, forensic anthropologists, forensic experts, and geologists who utilize technology such as drones or ground-penetrating radar. 

Official searches are carried out with the deployment of security forces—such as the National Guard, the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), and local police—to secure the perimeter in high-risk areas.  Often, the CNB and local prosecutor's offices organize field search operations alongside the mothers' collectives, focusing on locations previously mapped out by the families.

Despite the existence of these government brigades, organizations like Amnesty International and media outlets report that institutional capacity is often overwhelmed by the country's forensic crisis. There are currently 72,000 cadavers or parts thereof, sitting in morgues around the country awaiting identification.  Frequently, it is civil collectives that first locate clandestine graves and subsequently notify the government so that the relevant prosecutor's office can arrive to officially recover and secure the human remains. 

The Guardia Nacional and the Mexican Army (SEDENA) act primarily as a militarized security shield for local forensic experts and state prosecutors during exhumations. For example, in massive recent joint sweeps by State Prosecutors and the Guardia Nacional in northern regions like Chihuahua, security forces successfully protected forensic teams extracting 73 bodies from clandestine graves in a single month. The government has prioritized creating structural forensic hubs. They have completed specialized regional centers for human identification and temporary body storage units in heavily impacted states like Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Sinaloa, and Coahuila to process the high volume of human remains recovered during Guardia-escorted operations.  Independent monitoring platforms like the Plataforma Ciudadana de Fosas(mass graves) and human rights entities like Amnesty International highlight serious discrepancies in the government's claimed results. 

While state-level prosecutors report thousands of graves, federal tracking often undercounts them. Civil tracking platforms frequently note that the government's official numbers are much lower than the actual totals published daily by independent media and civilian searchers. Most of the graves officially "recovered" under the protection of the Guardia Nacional were actually first discovered and physically excavated by the mothers' collectives. Family organizations heavily criticize the state for taking statistical credit for discoveries that civilians achieved through their own dangerous fieldwork.

As of today, over 30 madres buscadoras and other participants have been murdered by organized crime upon discovery of mass graves.  This issue is not being taken seriously.  Comments include the comparative aspect of the issue.  For example, someone will quote the high number of missing persons in the U.S., not knowing that 85 to 91% of those missing are actually found.  Most of those cases are family-related, where one spouse takes off with the child or a runaway case.

How does this affect you?  Probably not much at all.  Why is it so important to all of us?  Because as RVers, tourists, and expats, we are supporting a country and a regime that has done little to nothing to end the tragedy.  I find it interesting that some tourists who regularly visit Mexico have decided to make the trip by air to avoid travel through the U.S. during the North American political conflict.  I guess that doesn't compare or measure up to the war that is being waged in Mexico, including the disappearance of our children.  I'm not pointing fingers but solely making a point of how desperate the situation has become and how little attention it is receiving from Canada, the U.S., and the United Nations.

Send letters or emails to your embassy and to Mexican consulates, letting them know how you may feel about this.