Draft:Colectivo Madres Buscadoras de Sonora

The Colectivo Madres Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Mothers Collective of Sonora) is a Mexican non-profit organization dedicated to finding lost people in the state of Sonora, and occasionally in other states. The organization was formed in 2019, in response to increasing rates of murders, femicides, and disappearances.

It is formed primarily of mothers with missing children, who seek to recover the remains of their relatives. The women carry out the field search for bodies and human remains, as well as the identification of those buried in mass graves. The organization has around 700 women members, from locations around Sonora including Caborca, Cajeme, Magdalena, Guaymas, Hermosillo, Huatabampo, and Nogales.

History
The group was created following the disappearance of Ceci Patricia Flores Armenta's two children; one in 2015 and the other in 2019. Flores Armenta felt the local authorities did not thoroughly investigate her case, and decided to found Madres Buscadoras to respond to other cases.

On 2 December 2018, Jesús Ramón Martínez Delgado, the son of Cecilia Delgado, was kidnapped in Hermosillo, Sonora. A year later, on 4 May 2019, Marco Antonio Saucedo Rocha, the son of Ceci Patricia Flores Armenta, disappeared in the same city.

At the beginning of 2019, the first group of women searchers was formed in Guaymas, under the name Guerreras buscadoras (Search Warriors). The team found multiple graves and bodies in different locations. After several months of intense work on the ground, Guerreras buscadoras suddenly stopped its activity, which some members attributed to the interference of Sonora's state government.

The group's first searches began informally, without a specific procedure or methodology. The searchers were later trained by trackers from Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, who then trained other women in turn. From the first expeditions in the field, they found bodies, remains of charred bones, and pieces of clothing.

In May 2019, Madres buscadoras de Sonora was created, followed by Buscadoras por la paz (Seekers for Peace) a few months later. Guerreras  buscadoras was revived in 2020, with new members. The three groups worked together on searches and trainings. In 2020, the groups grew and multiplied to form 11 groups throughout the state.

By January 2020, the group had 200 members and had located and identified 79 sets of remains.

They have also expanded their work, woking with homeless people who wish to reunite with their families.

Background
In Mexico, the problems of forced disappearance and the discovery of clandestine graves are not a recent phenomenon. According to the 2021 report of the Ministry of the Interior Search and Identification of Missing Persons, there are more than 90,000 missing people in Mexico. The municipalities with the largest number of bodies found in clandestine graves are located in Jalisco, Colima, Sinaloa, Guanajuato and Sonora. Women represent 24.70% of missing people. If people under 18 years of age are considered, adolescent girls and women represent 55.30% of the missing, the majority between 10 and 17 years old.

The Mexican drug war began in 2006, under the leadership of then-president Felipe Calderón. The combat strategy deployed military forces in order to attack drug trafficking networks and organized crime. During this time, violence worsened, and forced disappearances and human rights violations increased. The violence did not diminish with the election of President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012. On the contrary, during his goverment the military strategy was continued, and the number of missing people cases increased. Many people felt that the authorities were negligent in investigating these cases, and that investigations which did occur often had irregularities.

According to the National Clandestine Graves report and the National Registry of Missing or Unlocated Persons (2020), from 2006 to 2009, 3,631 clandestine graves were found in Mexico, of which 219 were found in Sonora.

Search protocols
The members of the group travel throughout Sonora in search of human remains that will allow them to identify their missing children, guided by reports issued by the government. On any given search, the first three days are dedicated to exploration and the next four are dedicated to active search. The group defines a positive search as any search when a clandestine grave, body or bone is found.

There are two action protocols carried out by the group: the search for life and the search for bodies. The first refers to the process of identifying a homeless person who presents some of the characteristics of a missing person. The photograph of the person in question is shared on social networks and their family is searched for. In the second, the group goes directly to the mountains or other rural areas, looking for anomalies or disturbances in the ground.

If the search is positive, the type of clothing the bodies are wearing is determined, and checked against official reports to see if they have any official identification. The corresponding authorities are then contacted.

Threats
The threats to the members of the collectives are constant, both through telephone calls and on their Facebook pages, and occasionally in the search field itself. Members have reported that those who provide information to the organizations have also faced retribution, including the burning of their homes.

On November 2, 2019, the group, Ceci Patricia Flores and an element of the Ministerial Criminal Investigation Agency were threatened with death by an armed commando while they were carrying out searches on land in the municipality of Puerto Peñasco. Those threatened immediately left and have not returned to work in said municipality.

On July 15, 2021, a member of the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora collective, Aranza Ramos, was executed in Guaymas, Sonora by drug traffickers from the State of Sonora. She had joined the group with the intention of looking for her husband Brayan Omar Celaya.

In May 2024, the Mexican president derided the group and others like it, saying members suffered "a delirium of necrophilia".

Activities

 * On May 10, 2019, Ceci Patricia Flores received an anonymous call to inform her that they would return Jesús Adrián, one of her missing children, who was released at a point on the Hermosillo coast.
 * On Monday, October 11, 2021, Ceci Flores announced that she would begin a hunger strike outside the facilities of the Attorney General's Office (Mexico), due to the lack of attention from said organization, after having reported several deaths threats made against her.
 * The group has carried out searches around the United States-Mexican border, in collaboration with the U.S.-based organization Armadillos Binacional.