Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas, she is the author of several books and has written for The New York Times, the London Review of Books blog, The Baffler, Current Affairs, and Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications.
This is her latest contribution to Al Jazeera:
The city of Guadalajara in Mexico is scheduled to host four World Cup matches next year, and labourers are working around the clock to revamp infrastructure in time for the tournament.
On account of frenzied construction, the city’s roads are presently a bona fide mess, constituting a perpetual headache for those who must transit them.
But Guadalajara has a much bigger problem than traffic. The metropolis is the capital of the western state of Jalisco, which happens to possess the highest number of disappeared people in all of Mexico.
The official tally of Jalisco’s disappeared is close to 16,000, out of a total of more than 130,000 countrywide. However, the frequent reluctance of family members to report missing persons for fear of retribution means the true toll is undoubtedly higher.
Now, with the World Cup fast approaching, Mexican authorities are also working overtime to sanitise Guadalajara’s image. For months, local officials have been threatening to remove the portraits and signs from the towering “roundabout of the disappeared” in the centre of the city, effectively re-disappearing them.
Click here to read the complete, original article by Belèn Fernandez on Al Jazeera
Source: Al Jazeera
