Relatives of the disappeared come to give blood samples; renew hope

Nestor Jimenez and Jessica Xantomila

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday May 13, 2022, p. eleven

Karla has been looking for her father, Ernesto Vázquez, for almost four years, when he disappeared in a community in the state of Puebla, where the authorities have not advanced in this time with any indication of his location; In addition, they refused to take her statement because she was not present in the town at the time of her disappearance.

After finding out at the last minute about the brigade to collect blood samples and personal data from relatives of disappeared persons, convened by the Ministry of the Interior and the National Search Commission (CNB), Karla was one of the last to arrive at the offices of dependency in the Juárez neighborhood, before concluding this process yesterday afternoon.

She reported that her father disappeared in 2018 in Huejotzingo, where he had gone to work, while she works as a caregiver in Mexico City. One afternoon her sister spoke to her and informed her that Ernesto had not slept for days.

They only know that he went out with a neighbor to collect firewood and did not return. When questioning him that day, he only pointed out that they went to a cabin where they sell beer, and he does not know where he went. “No one knows anything, the boy only refers to him (his father) as ‘the man was… he was Don Ernesto,’ as if he had died.”

On the one hand, he said, he sees no progress in the inquiries by municipal authorities, while when he went to the state authorities nobody wants to take a statement from us because they say that there is already a (municipal) act and that there cannot be two for the same case.

Yesterday was escaped of his work to attend the sampling in the hope that this process will help locate him. Visibly affected, she emphasizes that she wants to know where she is, alive or dead.

At the CNB headquarters, Aurelia Pinto Hernández and Valentín Alonso Hernández also showed up to have more tools that would allow them to locate their son, Carlos Alonso Pinto, who disappeared on August 5, 2020.

Carlos was trying to get a girlwhom he went to drop off at his home in Los Reyes, state of Mexico. The authorities (of Nezahualcóyotl) tell us that they are working, that they are looking for him, but nothing is achieved. It is not the first time that they have delivered genetic samples, they did it once in Texcoco, but they trust that now there will be a better result. They do not lose faith that they will find him alive.

The samples collected since last Monday will be sent to the Regional Center for Human Identification, in Coahuila, and later they will be sent to the place where the headquarters of the National Center for Human Identification is defined, already approved by Congress, where the databases will be linked. of all country.