On a recent Sunday, scores of families showed up at the Catholic Church of Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Merced in a working-class neighborhood of this vibrant port city.<\/p>\n
They came not to attend services, but for a distinct purpose: to give blood for possible DNA matches with human remains recently unearthed in a suspected dumping ground for murder victims on the northern fringes of Veracruz. Police technicians were taking the blood samples.<\/p>\n
All of those at the church said they were keen to identify loved ones who are among Veracruz\u2019s legions of desaparecidos<\/em>, or disappeared.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say 80% of the families in Veracruz have a relative who is missing, or know someone who is missing,\u201d said Sergio Garcia Vasquez, a taxi driver\u00a0who was among those at the church.<\/p>\n Led by a tip presumably supplied by drug cartel members who felt remorse, relatives and friends of missing people have been discovering secret graves in a field adjacent to a residential district called Colinas de Santa Fe. The excavations began Aug. 2 and at least 80 graves have been unearthed.<\/p>\n Nationwide, thousands of people have gone missing in recent years\u2014some victims of the nation\u2019s drug wars, some innocent bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong\u00a0time.<\/p>\n Officials say about 1,000 people \u2014\u00a0mostly men \u2014\u00a0have disappeared in Veracruz state in the last decade, though some Mexicans say the toll is higher because some families don\u2019t report the missing for fear of retribution.<\/p>\n Many of the family members who came to Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Merced\u00a0said\u00a0they were talking publicly about their cases for the first time. The growing prominence of the nationwide search movement for Mexico\u2019s thousands of missing has prompted many families of the disappeared to come forward.<\/p>\n The disappearance of 43 college students in the rural town of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero state has focused public attention on the missing. On Monday, the second anniversary of the students\u2019\u00a0disappearance, thousands of protesters<\/a> took to the streets of Mexico City demanding to know what happened to them.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are no longer scared,\u201d says Elizabeth Montalvo, who was helping to organize the church DNA event and is also the mother of a missing son\u2014Julio Cesar Martinez Montalvo, who disappeared on July 24, 2015. \u201cThey are coming out to denounce what has happened to their loved ones. Some hold out hope they may still be alive, though it is difficult after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n Garcia came to the church in hopes of learning\u00a0the fate of his niece, Nidia Eobeidy\u00a0Perez Montiel.<\/p>\n She was 19 when armed men abducted her, a cousin and an aunt from a Veracruz neighborhood, Colonia Astillero, on Aug. 5, 2011, he said. The three\u00a0haven\u2019t been seen since their abduction.<\/p>\n Commando-style kidnap operations, often by armed men in masks, are not uncommon here.<\/p>\n Led by a tip presumably supplied by drug cartel members who felt remorse, relatives and friends of missing people have been discovering secret graves in a field adjacent to a residential district called Colinas de Santa Fe. The excavations began Aug. 2 and at least 80 graves have been unearthed.<\/p>\n Nationwide, thousands of people have gone missing in recent years\u2014some victims of the nation\u2019s drug wars, some innocent bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong\u00a0time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The disappearance of 43 college students in the rural town of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero state has focused public attention on the missing. On Monday, the second anniversary of the students\u2019\u00a0disappearance, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Mexico City demanding to know what happened to them.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are no longer scared,\u201d says Elizabeth Montalvo, who was helping to organize the church DNA event and is also the mother of a missing son\u2014Julio Cesar Martinez Montalvo, who disappeared on July 24, 2015. \u201cThey are coming out to denounce what has happened to their loved ones. Some hold out hope they may still be alive, though it is difficult after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"