Behind the scenes of a story on Mexico’s "disappeared"

Trigger warning: the first part of this blog contains details of kidnappings, murder and mass graves.

Behind the scenes of any story are boundless interviews, checks and edits. But there’s also hours of research and actually getting the story off the ground.

I visited Jalisco, the Mexican state with the highest record - over 15,000 - of missing people, last week after a story I had been quietly working on for the last six months was finally given the green light by the Jalisco Search Commission just two days prior. 

The email conversation started earlier in the year. After discovering a story I wanted to investigate in western Mexico involving mass graves, technology, the cartel, and search groups led by mothers of the disappeared, there had been numerous calls, WhatsApp messages, and emails with a contact to try and make it happen. We penned in May/June for a visit but then weeks before I was told there were political issues and it was likely the story might not come off. After investing so much time and energy, it was obviously frustrating but I encouraged my source to keep plugging away, and to see if there were any other solutions if we couldn’t do the story exactly how we initially wanted to. Fortunately, at the last moment I received a voice note: the story was back on. Cue spending a Saturday night researching, and booking buses and hotels for the Monday. (And lining up another piece for while I was in town).

After a 10-hour journey, the next day was spent with a team of about eight people, discovering the different approaches by Jalisco’s search commission to find those who have forcibly disappeared by the cartel, crime groups who snatch young people from their houses and create fake job ads to lure people into prostitution, forced labour, and eventually, to their deaths (many will end up killed and buried in graves). 

I spent an hour interviewing one mother whose son was forcibly taken from his house in 2019. Months later his body parts were found in different graves. She was handed 13 of his body parts in a bag. Five years later she has no idea what happened to him during the time he was missing, or why he was taken. 

I also visited experimental sites, one of which was located 200 metres away from a mass grave, and interviewed several other people connected to the searches.

As I write this, I don’t have a commission. 

I pitched one national earlier in the year but they didn’t want to be involved due to the safety risks. The week before I left, as we were in limbo as to whether the story would come off, I pitched an editor of another national but whose remit it doesn’t exactly fall under, but he’s a good contact. I’m waiting to find out if it might come off. 

All in all it involved hours of phone calls, emails, and voice notes even before I set off to Jalisco. About 20 hours of travel. A day (9.30am-6pm) of interviews, presentations and site visits, and then there’ll be hours and hours of pulling it all together into a story. And perhaps another interview or two. And then more edits, fact checks, and edits. You don’t want to know what kind of below minimum wage fee that'll amount to. Of course, it’s not about the money (though I do believe we should be paid more fairly because as you can see, it's not sustainable at all), but I wanted to share what’s involved in a story like this, because like anything, when we see the final product, you don’t see everything that’s gone into it beforehand. But this is just one story from me. This is nothing compared to the output of freelancers who work tirelessly (and often, risk their lives) spending countless hours on very important stories, for tiny sums of money. 

Another reminder to invest/spend money on journalism. 🖊️