During the last 50 years, Mexico has been plagued with cases of kidnappings and missing people. The reasons for people disappearing vary –from cases of political repression to victims of the War on Drugs–, but what remains constant is the trace of pain left by the absence of those who haven't returned.

On June 4, 2020, I was kidnapped by a cartel in the outskirts of Mexico City. After being freed, I realized that I was one of the very few that could speak about this pressing issue –kidnappings and disappearances– as a survivor.

In search of the meaning of the physical and emotional pain that came to me in the form of torture and sexual abuse on the night of my kidnapping, I soon found some of the families of the more than 116,000 missing people of Mexico. As I grew closer to them, I turned from a survivor of my own story to an insider and active participant on the searches and activities of the families of the missing who have organized themselves to locate their loved ones.

During the last four years, I have been doing activism with them and intimately documenting their stories –most of which have never been heard or seen–, using photography and video to create an archive of the anguish and agony left by the crimes committed by both government and cartels.

I have been traveling across the majority of Mexico, working with dozens of organized collectives of families of the missing and with hundreds of individual cases of disappearance and kidnappings, researching to visualize the vestiges that violence have left in our houses, spaces, territories and bodies, along with the invisible threads of suffering and resistance that make us all connected in Mexico.

NOTE: This audiovisual series is still ongoing.