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suspects charged, and charging people does not necessarily mean they committed the
crime in question or will eventually be found guilty by a judge. Nonetheless, compared to
the period prior to the “working meetings”—when prosecutors did little to investigate
hundreds of reported disappearances, and not a single disappearance case had resulted
in a suspect being charged—this represents a dramatic shift.
Moreover, even in cases incorporated in the “working meetings” in which no suspects
have been charged, families told Human Rights Watch that since they began the process,
prosecutors had taken real steps to pursue leads and search for their loved ones—
something that had never happened before. For these families, seeing prosecutors take
basic investigative steps—summoning suspects for questioning, canvassing for witnesses
in the places where their loved ones had been abducted, leading raids on suspected “safe
houses, or pressing telephone companies to hand over victims’ cell phone records—
showed them that investigators were approaching cases with a renewed sense of urgency,
purpose, and competence. And for both victims’ families and prosecutors, seeing any
results—be it a new lead or a disqualified hypothesis—has been critical to breaking
through a climate of disillusionment and inertia—and given them a sense that such cases
can actually be solved, and perhaps the missing people found.
For example, Israel Arenas Durán, 17, Adrián Nava Cid, 23, and brothers Gabriel and
Reynaldo García Álvarez—who worked at a plant nursery in Juárez, Nuevo León—
disappeared on the night of June 17, 2011, after going for drinks at a bar. 361 That night,
Israel Arenas had called his brother from the bar and asked him to bring extra money so he
could pay a tab. On his drive to the bar, Arenas’s brother saw him being loaded into a
police vehicle, unit 131. Arenas’s parents promptly went to the police station, but police
denied having detained him. 362 His parents filed a complaint with the state prosecutor’s
office on June 20.
The investigation of the disappearance of Arenas and his three friends was initially
assigned to a subdivision of the state prosecutor’s office specializing in crimes by officials.
Prosecutors detained one police officer assigned to the patrol unit identified by Arenas’s
361 Nuevo León State Prosecutor’s Office, Testimony of C. Luz Maria Duran Mota, mother of Israel Arenas Duran (Declaración
testimonial), Averiguacion Previa 125/2011-I, June 20, 2011 (on file with Human Rights Watch).
362 Nuevo León State Prosecutor’s Office, Testimony of Irving Arenas Durán, Juárez, Nuevo León, June 21, 2011 (on file with
Human Rights Watch).
MEXICO’S DISAPPEARED 102