They disappeared, but the police solved their case. No one is looking for thousands more

It was supposed to be the road trip of their lives. Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoade planned to leave the surfing community in the port of Ensenada in northwestern Mexico for the next town on the Pacific coast, Rosarito. On the way, they mainly intended to camp and surf, writes the British BBC.

But instead they disappeared. At first, they were silent on social networks. Then they didn’t respond to messages and calls. In the end, they didn’t even arrive at one of the ordered Airbnb accommodations. It was this that led the mother of the Robinson brothers to start looking for her sons.

Last Sunday, Mexican authorities found their remains in a well just a few kilometers from where they had slept. Their charred car was also found nearby. Someone shot the trio in the head.

The tragic fate of three young men has been filling the front pages of the world’s media for several days. This is not an isolated case in Mexico itself. According to local authorities, thousands of people are missing across the country. Families often do not even have the prospect that their loved ones will ever be able to track down and punish the culprits.

The year before last, Mexico crossed the threshold of 100,000 people who have been missing across the country since 1964. At the same time, only a minimum can be solved. For example, only 35 cases of disappearance have reached the stage of conviction of the perpetrators, according to UN data (as of May 2022) with reference to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the vast majority of cases, the date of disappearance was unknown, and approximately 97 percent of the cases occurred after December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug gangs and sent the military against them. But the fight has so far been unsuccessful, and the increase in crime and violence still shakes the country today, as reported by the Reuters agency.

In 2023, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances reported that the number of recorded disappearances rose to 111,896. This does not include cases where the victims were subsequently found dead. The real numbers may thus be even higher.

Cartels in Mexico

According to the UN, cases of missing persons in Mexico are on the rise due to continued violence by drug gangs and insufficiently effective investigations.

Renata Demichelisová, director of the human rights organization Elementa DDHH operating in the state of Baja California, also mentioned similar factors to The New York Times. According to her, in this state in particular, the number of disappearances is “exponentially increasing”. Drug trafficking, internal displacement, migration and gender-based violence contribute to this.

The BBC, on the other hand, in connection with organized crime in Mexico, states that drug cartels are waging a territorial war there for drug smuggling and human trafficking routes to the north. On the contrary, illegal weapons are moving to the south. “It’s a multi-billion dollar industry for the cartels that operate along the border, and foreigners have often crossed paths with organized crime in Mexico,” writes the British public media outlet.

The trio of surfers, although they died a violent death, were not victims of organized crime, according to Attorney General Maria Elena Andrade Ramirézová, writes the NYT. “This aggression appears to have occurred in an unpredictable and random manner,” she said.

The perpetrators apparently attacked the trio while trying to steal their car. “They took advantage of it when they saw the vehicle in the open, in a remote location where they knew there were no witnesses,” the prosecutor said further on the incident.

The surfers apparently fought back, which according to available information became fatal for them.

The case has sparked consternation in the Ensenada surfing community, and the state of Baja California alone currently has over 17,300 active missing persons investigations, Elementa DDHH reports.

However, it is often not clear whether the missing persons have been found, whether they have become victims of a crime, or whether anyone has been arrested. In some cases, even basic information to start the search is missing. Federal and state officials in Mexico, however, tend to say that the rate of violence has dropped, even though official figures are contradictory, the NYT continues.

When asked by journalists why the disappearance of three foreigners was investigated so quickly (including the apprehension of the suspects), while many local cases were not, Prosecutor Ramirézová responded that this is not possible in all cases.

60-year-old Adriana Morenová is also positive that the bodies of the three surfers were found. “I’m very happy that they were found so quickly,” she said. But she has mixed feelings, because she herself has been missing her son for a long time.

He and two other workers were abducted in the state of Coahuila in 2009. “Fifteen years after my boy’s disappearance, nothing happens… I feel like missing people fall into different levels of importance,” she was quoted as saying by the NYT.