Meet the women digging for missing family members

The metal stick penetrates the earth.

One of the women pulls it out of the ground and brings the stick to her face.

- We use it to smell corpses.

If there are body parts, it smells rotten.

We are many mothers here who are looking for our children, she says.

Twice a week the group goes out to search.

They receive anonymous tips via telephone calls about where relatives' bodies may be buried.

- I'm looking for my son Miguel Angel Sánchez Pérez, 26 years old.

I heard him sitting in his car when a gang came and took him away.

As a mother, it is very difficult, but what keeps us going is the hope of finding them, says Soledad Peréz.

85,000 have disappeared

More than 85,000 Mexicans have disappeared during the drug war.

In 2020 alone, 35,000 people were murdered in Mexico, eight out of ten murders were linked to drug deals.

Mexican journalist Javier Valdez was the first to report on a group of women digging for their missing family members.

It was he who, in one of his articles, gave the group the name Las Rastreadoras.

In May 2017, he himself was murdered in the open street.

- I always said he was my conscience, or is, because for me Javier Valdez is still alive.

Javier was a Rastreador, says the group's leader Mirna Medina.

The search combined with danger to life

The pursuit of answers can be life-threatening in a society controlled by organized crime.

The women often end up in risky situations because the cartels keep track of the places where they buried their victims. 

When the Mission Review team is with Las Rastroeadoras looking out in the desert, they suddenly hear the engine noise of a vehicle on its way to their place.

- There will be armed men.

Hide the camera when the car arrives, they hear from the group's driver. 

Together, they manage to get out of the scene unharmed. 

"Many left to identify"

Every woman in Las Rastreadoras carries on her own painful story of someone close who has disappeared.

A partner, a sibling or a child.

An estimated 7,000 people have disappeared in the state of Sinaola alone.

Mirna Medina says that the group initially consisted of eight women, but that they are now over 300 in several municipalities.

- We have found 208 bodies and handed over remains to 150 families.

But there are many left to identify.

"In the shadow of El Chapo" on SVT Play.