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In the case of Daniel Cantú Iris, the omissions, errors, and delays stretched over several
years and several different prosecutors. 162 Cantú, 23, worked for a mining company in
Torreón. At approximately 9 a.m. on February 21, 2007, he set out in a car for a mine in
Paredón, Coahuila, with the company’s owner, Héctor Francisco León García, and the
owner’s cousin, José Ángel Esparza León. The men never arrived at their destination.
Cantú’s father filed an official complaint on February 26, 2007, and members of his family
called prosecutors regularly to see what progress had been made. 163
The first investigator assigned to the case, retired Army lieutenant colonel Aurelio Macías
García, claimed the police were conducting a wide range of interviews and had undertaken
several raids to search for Cantú and the others, Cantú’s mother told Human Rights Watch.
Macías died in July 2008 and the investigation was assigned to a different investigator.
Cantú’s relatives assumed prosecutors were still investigating. However, when Cantú’s
mother asked—on the recommendation of local human rights defenders—to review the
prosecutor’s case file in May 2010, she found that it was virtually empty. During the period
Macías was in charge, the only documents assembled in the case file were the family’s
initial complaint and 13 pages of requests for Cantú’s cell phone records. 164 When she
asked officials whether there were any other documents from this period, they said that
Macías’s wife had taken many of his case files after he died, and that she may have taken
Cantú’s. Indeed, the only steps investigators took from February 2007 through May 2010 to
search for the victims were interviewing a friend of Cantú and issuing bulletins to medical
and law enforcement officials to look for the missing people and their stolen vehicle,
according to a report prepared by the director of the investigations in Coahuila. 165 She also
discovered that the investigations into the disappearance of the three victims had been
separated into three separate investigations, each of which was being handled by a
different prosecutor, in spite of the clear tie between the cases. 166
162 Human Rights Watch interview with Diana Iris García, mother of Daniel Cantú Iris, Saltillo, Coahuila, April 25, 2012.
163 Coahuila State Prosecutor’s Office. “Complaint of Mario Cantú Sifuentes” (Denuncia por Comparecencia de Mario Cantú
Sifuentes), father of Daniel Cantú Iris, Saltillo, Coahuila, February 26, 2007.
164 Human Rights Watch interview with Diana Iris García, April 25, 2012.
165 Communique from Guadalupe Toca Zavala, Director of Investigations, Coahuila State Prosecutor’s Office (Directora
General de Averiguaciones Previas de la Fiscalía General del Estado de Coahuila), to Lic. Juan José Yanez Arreola, Prosecutor
of Professionalization and Projects (Fiscal Jurídico de Profesionalización y de Proyectos), Oficio No. D.G.A.P. 033/2010,
Saltillo, Coahuila, September 22, 2010 (on file with Human Rights Watch).
166 Ibid.; Human Rights Watch interview with Diana Iris García, April 25, 2012.
MEXICO’S DISAPPEARED 52