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| photo provided by BBC |
A Mexican businesswoman who headed a
group of 600 families searching for their disappeared relatives has been
killed.
Mrs Rodríguez founded the local
group for families who were victims of violence after her daughter, Karen
Alejandra, was kidnapped in 2012.
The group she established was part of a wider trend
which mushroomed after the October 2014 disappearance of
43 students from Ayotzinapa in the southwestern state of Guerrero.
Frustrated by a lack of government help, groups of
families began their own searches for people who had disappeared in their
areas, taking courses in forensic anthropology, archaeology, law, buying caving
equipment and becoming experts in identifying graves and bones.
There are now at least 13 of these groups across the
country.
She was known for successfully investigating
the kidnap and murder of her daughter by a local drug cartel, the Zetas.
The information she gave the police
ensured the gang members were jailed.
But in March one of them escaped and
her colleagues said she started to receive threats. She was killed on Mexico's
mother's day, 10 May.
Her colleagues said she had asked
for police protection but was ignored.
State prosecutor Irving Barrios told
a news conference that security needs had been met and police officers made
rounds three times a day. Her family disputes this.
The Mexican human rights commission
issued a statement saying it deplored her murder and called for a full
investigation.
According to one of her fellow
campaigners, Mrs Rodríguez felt she could not sit back after her daughter's
killers were caught.
"She told us that she was
incomplete, that although she had found her daughter, nothing would ever return
to normal for her," Graciela Pérez told the BBC.
Ms Pérez, who also has a missing
daughter, described the murdered activist as someone "with a very strong,
caring and cheerful character".
credit: BBC
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