Thousands of people have been killed across Mexico following violence that first erupted in 2006 with the county’s declaration on the war on drugs. Thousands more are still missing.
But it wasn’t just drug cartels doing the vanishing.
Marines with the Mexican military were deployed to the border city of Nuevo Laredo in 2018 to help dismantle cartels in that sector of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. They were behind a wave of kidnappings of several Nuevo Laredo residents — including U.S. citizen Jorge Antonio Hernández Dominguez.
Freelance reporter J. Weston Phippen wrote about the kidnappings in a 2020 Politico article.
The article inspired the new documentary Spring of the Vanishing, which tells the story of the months of denial, redirection, and eventual apology by the Mexican government over the disappearances.
Phippen, a producer on the film, said the U.S.-trained Mexican marines stationed in Nuevo Laredo were outsiders with little-to-no knowledge about these areas.
“What you have is just the military doing what the military is trained to do — which is to kill people,” he said. “Not to arrest someone, not to question them, not to investigate or gather evidence or anything. And that is a huge problem in Nuevo Laredo.”
A recent screening of the documentary was attended by some of the wives and mothers featured in the film.
The film’s director, Andrew Glazer, said he was inspired by the women in Mexico who have pushed for answers about what happened to their loved ones.
“They, for years now, have been incredibly brave and marching publicly and advocating and speaking to the media and pushing for their case, and directly challenging military in the streets at times.”
See a trailer of Spring of the Vanishing below:
