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Enforced Disappearances by Local Police
The security force most frequently implicated in the enforced disappearances documented
by Human Rights Watch is local police. Human Rights Watch found strong evidence in 95
cases that local police participated directly or indirectly in enforced disappearances. 38
For example, Israel Torres Lazarín, 21, worked at a treatment center for drug addicts in
Gómez Palacios, Durango. On June 18, 2009, Torres was traveling together with five of his
co-workers to pick up a patient when their car was stopped by municipal police in
Matamoros, Coahuila. 39 Torres communicated via radio with the director of the treatment
center to notify him that the group had been stopped outside of a Soriana department
store (a chain in Mexico) by police, who informed them that it was a “routine check.” 40 The
director later told Torres’s mother that when he radioed back to Torres three minutes later,
the police were confiscating the detainees’ radio and cellphones. When the director tried
communicating by radio a third time, there was no answer. The director immediately
traveled to the location and spoke to several people working nearby who said they had
seen the police stop the car and place six individuals in a truck marked with the insignia of
the municipal police. 41 Torres and his five co-workers were never seen again.
In another case, gold dealers Eduardo Cortés Cortés, 27, José Manuel Cortés Cortés, 21,
Carlos Magallón Magallón, 30, and David Magallón Magallón, 28, were abducted after
traveling from their homes in the town of Pajacuarán, Michoacan, to buy and sell gold in
the state of San Luis Potosí, as they did routinely as part of their trade, according to the
father of victims Eduardo and José Manual Cortés Cortés. 42 On the night of September 29,
38 For the purposes of this report, “local police” refers to state and municipal police. Each of Mexico’s 32 federal entities (31
states and the Federal District) has its own police force, as do the vast majority of its approximately 2,400 municipalities.
State prosecutors’ offices also have their own police force—judicial police, or policías ministeriales—who are also
considered “local police.”
39 Human Rights Watch interview with María Luisa Lazarín Sierra, mother of Israel Torres Lazarín, Torreón, Coahuila, April 24,
2012; Federal Prosecutor’s Office, Testimony of María Luisa Lazarín Sierra (Comparecencia de María Luisa Lazarín Sierra),
AP/PGR/COAH/TORR/AG11-111/161/2012, March 26, 2012 (on file with Human Rights Watch).
40 Ibid.
41 Federal Prosecutor’s Office, Testimony of María Luisa Lazarín Sierra (Comparecencia de María Luisa Lazarín Sierra),
AP/PGR/COAH/TORR/AG11-111/161/2012, March 26, 2012.
42 Javier Cortés Maravilla, father of victims Eduardo Cortés Cortés and José Manuel Cortés Cortés, Complaint for
Disappearance of Person (Asunto: Se Interpone Denuncia por Desaparición de Persona), official complaint filed with San Luis
Potosí Prosecutor’s Office, Cardenas, San Luis Potosí, October 5, 2009 (on file with Human Rights Watch). Human Rights
Watch interview with Martin Faz Mora and Ricardo Sánchez García, human rights defenders accompanying families in the
case, San Luis Potosí, México, September 18, 2012.
MEXICO’S DISAPPEARED 26