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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Thomas Graham in Mazatlán

‘If you keep looking we will kill you’: death stalks those searching for Mexico’s disappeared

A person in a blue shirt swings a pickaxe at dirt, with armed personnel and a military vehicle behind them
Laura, a searcher from the Hearts United for One Cause collective, swings a pickaxe to dig into the ground while searching for bodies in an area surrounding a thermoelectric plant in Mazatlán. Photograph: Jesus Verdugo/Jesús Verdugo

Beneath the cooling towers of Mazatlán’s power plant, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a dozen women pick through the marshland, looking for the upturned soil – and the scent – that betrays the location of a buried body.

They are part of Hearts United for One Cause, one of hundreds of collectives scattered across Mexico looking for the members’ missing relatives. But these searchers have been marked out by another layer of tragedy: one of them was murdered in February, and another disappeared in October.

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