Arturo Robles left home, went to work and sent his last message to his family at 7:44 a.m. He said something innocuous, everyday, ordinary, the kind of message you send when you can’t imagine you’re about to leave: that he was going to have breakfast. He stopped reading the reply sent 16 minutes later. His trail disappeared on Monday morning, May 22, and life at Jardines Vallarta in Zapopan, Jalisco, went on as if nothing had happened. “The week is over and we don’t know anything else,” laments her sister Beatriz Robles on the phone. That day, three other young people disappeared in the same neighborhood. Two days earlier, another had disappeared without a trace. The five worked or went to the same place: a call center. Nobody knows where they are.
Five people missing, five lives in brackets, five families who took to the streets in Guadalajara this Friday to demand five days later that they appear alive. All of the stories are similar to Robles’: seemingly ordinary days that begin to break with unanswered messages, hours of uncertainty, and finally the nightmare of facing a disappearance.
Robles is 30 years old, has short black hair, ear, nose and chest piercings and tattoos on his legs. Siblings Itzel Abigail (27) and Carlos David (23) from Valladolid Hernández left home together this morning on May 22 to go to work. The two were telephone consultants in the call center. She has tattoos on her arms and legs and straight brown hair; er, a scar on his right forearm. Jesús Alfredo Salazar Ventura (37) has honey-colored eyes and tattoos on his arms. On the day he disappeared, according to some versions, he was on his way to the call center for an interview.
Two days earlier, on May 20, Carlos Benjamín García Cuevas had already disappeared – 31 years old, short wavy brown hair, scar on his forehead. It was the first ever. Prosecutors have said in a statement that they are investigating the five enforced disappearances together, as all the victims worked at the same place. In addition, information is scarce and fragmented. Just a few notes, not intended to paint a full picture of what could have happened. The case is notable for its opaqueness in a country already used to hiding its misery under the rug.
“We have no information. We went around, identified the cameras that could have recorded something and took it to the prosecutor’s office. Every time we leave, they tell us, “We’re busy”; “we are satisfied”; “They must wait”. And the truth is, it’s hard not to understand because you get there and the walls of the prosecutor’s office are full of missing people. You hear about these things on the news. We live in an insecure country. You know things like this happen, but you never imagine that it could happen to you. And that’s like fighting a monster that’s getting bigger and bigger and you can’t stop it. The government does nothing. It’s hard, but we keep hoping to find him dead or alive,” adds Beatriz, Arturo Robles’ sister.
The procedure was conducted by the Special Prosecutor for Missing Persons #FEPD prosecutors to locate brothers Itzel Abigail and Carlos David, and Arturo and Jesús Alfredo, who worked in a call center. pic.twitter.com/wMV9nLrKvI
— Jalisco State Attorney’s Office (@FiscaliaJal) May 26, 2023
The public prosecutor’s office initially only states that they are investigating. In his statement this Thursday, he speaks of “remote searches”, of “collecting video recordings, witness statements and other evidence” in the call center; of searches in the area; Surveillance cameras intervened and “expert staff on the matter” analyzing the case. But nothing else. There is still no hypothesis, nothing to comfort the victims’ families, no strings to pull to understand what might have happened, why five young people went to work one day and still haven’t returned home are.
Jalisco is the reddest dot on the map of enforced disappearances in Mexico; an area that stands out like a sore on the already bleeding map of a country where 110,742 people have disappeared since 1962. In this state alone, which holds the eerie record, 14,978 people have disappeared.
However, this new case has shocked the state and brought back memories of recent collective trauma. In 2018, three film students, Salomón Aceves Gastélum (aged 25), Jesús Daniel Díaz (20), and Marco Ávalos (20), were brutally murdered and dissolved in acid by members of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, who mistook them for a rival Group. Jalisco still remembers this tragedy very well. Comparisons to the disappearance of the five young people from the call center were inevitable, fueled by the opacity and lack of information in the face of an incomprehensible event.
Arturo Robles is the youngest of six siblings. He studied architecture at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). He’s only recently arrived in Jalisco and earns just 3,000 pesos a week working in the call center. Her sister says she sells holiday packages in English because she speaks the language well. Now the state is holding its breath as the families of Robles and his four companions demonstrate at the Glorieta de los Desaparecidos in hopes the five youngsters won’t become another black statistic.
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