Never forget that we are waiting for you, never expect us to forget you

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 19, 2022: Mayrani Bautista, Benjamin’s younger sister, pats her mother Cristina Bautista after helping during the celebration that involved making enough food to feed dozens of people. Mariani and Doña, the two people closest to Benjamin, laugh as they recall his stories, how he used to put on his mother’s apron to wash dishes while listening to Michael Jackson or how he was always the best dancer at parties.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 18, 2022: Juan Bautista, Benjamin’s grandfather, sets up a tent for the celebration the family is hosting on behalf of San Salvador. Juan used to give many of his grandchildren rides in his truck when he babysat them during the seasons when his daughter Cristina and Benjamin’s father went to work in California.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 17, 2022: Cristina Bautista shows her hand after collecting blood from pigs raised to make moronga and pozole during preparations for the celebration at her family’s ranch. Doña Cristina is part of the group of parents who continue to fight for answers, even though at the beginning they did not let her go on the searches because she is a woman and a single mother.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 18, 2022: Joanna Hernández (8) and Yolsitlalin Hernández (11), Benjamin’s nieces, help clean roses for the celebration their family is organizing. Their mother was pregnant with the youngest when she fell into a deep depression over the disappearance of her younger brother, which affected the girls’ early childhood development.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 17, 2022: Cruz Bautista, Benjamin’s uncle, prepares to kill the pig they raised for the fiesta pozole while his father and brother-in-law tie it to a pole in the barn. During the first year of the disappearance, Cruz left his job as a rural teacher and replaced Cristina in the search groups for the normalista students.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 17, 2022: Cristina Bautista, mother of Benjamin, feeds breakfast and gets her granddaughters Joanna Hernandez (8) and Yolsitlalin Hernandez (11) ready for school. Like her daughter, Cristina is a single mother who migrated and worked in the United States for 6 years to be able to support her children and build the house they live in.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 18, 2022: Joanna Hernández (8) and Yolsitlalin Hernández (11) sweep the street outside their home next to an old poster with the face of their uncle Benjamin and the 42 other students who disappeared eight years ago. Despite promises from two successive presidents, the case remains unsolved. The previous administration was accused of orchestrating an elaborate cover-up, while the current government’s case has also begun to crumble.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 19, 2022: Carmela Salvador (68), Benjamin’s grandmother, enters a hallway on her way home from the rockets. From the “dirty war” of the 1970s to the narco-politics of today, there has been constant military and political repression against the Mixtec and Nahua communities in the mountains of Guerrero.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 18, 2022: Cristina Hernández (6), Benjamin’s niece, sleeps in her aunt Mayrani’s bed. Cristina was born two years after her uncle’s disappearance and still finds it hard to understand why her grandmother travels looking for her son.

ALPUYECANCINGO DE LAS MONTAÑAS, GUERRERO, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 19, 2022: A cloud of smoke levitates in the air after a rocket explosion during a celebration organized by Benjamin’s family.

Cristina Bautista is hardly at home, she travels all over the country demanding that the authorities find her son. At the end of February of this year, we accompanied her back to her town from Mexico City, she was returning to help her brother with the preparations for the feast of San Salvador, which would conclude with her stewardship. The need to embrace and care for those who are there, the daughters of her eldest daughter who works in the United States, her parents and her youngest daughter Mayrani, also bring her back.

The Nahua community of Alpuyecancingo de las Montañas and the Bautista family cannot find Benjamín Ascencio Bautista, one of the 100,000 missing persons in the country. Benjamín is part of the 43 students who disappeared at the hands of the army and organized crime in Guerrero at the end of 2014. This is perhaps Mexico’s most painful and media-acclaimed case of disappearance and there is still no trace of most of the young people, no trials, no convictions. To this day, mass disappearances continue throughout the country.

Never forget that we are waiting for you, never expect us to forget you (Quote embroidered by Cristina Bautista on Benjamin’s search poster).

Between plates of pozole and cuetes, Benjamin’s stories begin to echo in the house. It has been eight years since he disappeared and he is still spoken of in the present tense. His grandmother asks about him, his nieces have not assimilated what happened, his sister, a year younger, writes him on Instagram when she feels lonely. Here, while living a prolonged mourning, absence envelops everyday life, and parties persist, not as a reflection of oblivion but as hope for answers.

*report made together with the writer Oscar López for The Guardian.