In the photo they appear kneeling, gagged and beaten. Their relatives say that they are them, but Roberto Cuéllar, Diego Lara, Uriel Galván, Jaime Martínez and Dante Cedillo are much more. They practice boxing and cycling, study engineering and work in a blacksmith shop, they go to America and Messi, they listen to Junior H and Featherweight. It was almost yesterday that they went to the cinema to see Oppenheimer. Childhood friends, they are between 19 and 22 years old. On Friday, August 11, they met where they always were: at the San Miguel viewpoint, in Lagos de Moreno, in the Mexican state of Jalisco. They sent a last message at 10:55 p.m. to let them know that they were going home and after that there is only pain. The disappearance of the boys and the dissemination of the brutal images of their kidnapping have shaken an anesthetized country and show the difficulties of the authorities to clarify the cases of the disappeared.
On one side is the video of the horror —where two of the boys are lying face down, with their white T-shirts covered in blood, and another of the boys forced to beat and stab one of his friends— and on the other, is the recording of the group at sunset at the viewpoint, there is the video of Uriel as a child showing off his bicycle or the photos of Diego on the beach with his sister, there are Dante’s cycling awards and the broken crying of Roberto’s father waiting at the top from the viewpoint for his disappeared son to return: “Come on, my Cochi, where are you going to go up, son?”
The scant official information makes it impossible to know who, where or why took the boys. The trail points to organized crime. The broadcast video bore the brand “Puro MZ”, which is attributed to Mayo Zambada, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, and the car of one of the young men was found on fire on the highway between Lagos de Moreno and Encarnación de Díaz, a red zone due to the dispute between those from Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, affirmed this Wednesday that the connection of the crime with drug trafficking groups is “obvious”.
But first, where are the young people? Five days have passed and the authorities still have not recovered them. On Wednesday afternoon, the Prosecutor’s Office found the property where the photo and video were allegedly taken. Meanwhile, broken families just wait: “Give them back to us. How they are doesn’t matter. People who have them, give them back. They are no longer wearing us down over and over again.”
Roberto Olmeda Cuellar
Roberto Olmeda Cuéllar, in a photo shared on his social networks in 2020. COURTESY
Armando Olmeda said concerned that his son had already skipped a class. On Monday the lessons began at the University of Guadalajara, where Roberto was in the sixth semester of Industrial Engineering, and the boy had already lost a day. “Yesterday classes started and he could not go, I know that the teachers can wait for him, but, well, he already missed a class, but it is not his responsibility,” said the father, who had refused to see any video: ” I don’t want to see anything, because maybe I can’t bear to see that. I don’t want to hurt my mind. I have to stay strong.”
Roberto, who is called Cochi, is 20 years old, he is a student and an athlete. He regularly practices boxing, many times with Uriel. “He is a guy who hardly goes out, doesn’t smoke, hardly drinks,” his brother Miguel has said of him these days. It was to him that Roberto sent a picture last Friday from the San Miguel viewpoint, while he waited for the rest of the group. “If I had my brother in front of me, I would tell him that I love him very much, that I am very proud of him,” she says in an interview, “my mother is dedicated to selling pozole on Saturdays and he is the one who helps her.”
His Facebook account reveals his taste for rap and reading, his trips to Puerto Vallarta and Teotihuacán, his love for movies and sunsets. She celebrated his last birthday on December 12, when she wrote with a smiley face: “Already on the second floor # 20years.” On August 11, she was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt, dark pants, and white tennis shoes. On Wednesday afternoon, Armando wrote next to a photo of his son: “You are the sky, you will change the color, I will always love you, the magic remains in me. 5 days for 5 angels”.
Diego Lara Santoyo
Diego Alberto Lara Santoyo, in a photo shared on his social networks. COURTESY
It was his sister who raised the alarm on Twitter. Desperate, Magalli Lara wrote on Sunday: “Urgent: since last night, our lives are plunged into anguish. We have no news of my brother and his friends. Every minute counts in this desperate search.” The young woman also recounted that the last communication with her brother had been on Friday at 10:55 p.m. when he was going home. But he never came.
Diego is 20 years old and works as a blacksmith. He works in his father’s workshop. His family describes him as “a very cheerful and very hesitant boy.” He was proud of his car, a brown Volkswagen Jetta, which he even had as a Facebook cover photo. It is in that vehicle that the five young people traveled that night. The Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office found him at dawn from Monday to Tuesday on the highway between Lagos de Moreno and Encarnación Díaz. The car was on fire and in the trunk were the remains of a male person, according to the authorities, who had yet to carry out the identification.
On the day of the disappearance, he was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and torn jean pants, according to the search file. In the macabre leaked video, a person with that description appears, lying on the floor, with his hands tied behind his back, surrounded by blood. “What makes you want to search the egg to see such horrible content? In addition to insisting and harassing families to see that content? Don’t you think we are going through enough pain?” Magalli wrote this Wednesday, after the dissemination of the images. She, in return, has shared images of her brother in a sunset on the beach: “Come, make fun of me with your most mocking laugh, challenge me with your eyes, but come.”
Uriel Galvan Gonzalez
Uriel Galván González in an image shared on his social networks. COURTESY
Uriel is the youngest of all, he is only 19 years old. His father Jaime has pointed out that the boy “is very happy, very friendly and very close to his family.” They were already alarmed on Friday night, when when he called him he did not answer his cell phone and later he did not get to sleep. “We called him and he did not answer. He broke me down. I would tell him that I love him, that I miss him a lot.” It was his father who introduced Uriel to his passion for bicycles, so much so that at a very young age he joined a group of cyclists in Lagos. He also practiced boxing with Roberto.
The day he disappeared, he was wearing a white T-shirt, faded jean pants, and black tennis shoes. His vehicle was located hours after his disappearance next to the Arcángel parish, less than 60 meters from the San Miguel viewpoint where he had met his friends. He was not damaged, which suggests that he left it there to travel in Diego’s car with the rest of the group.
Dante Cedillo
Dante Cedillo Hernández, in a photo shared on his social networks. COURTESY
Dante was a professional cyclist, at the 2016 National Olympiad, when he was still a minor, he won two gold medals in various categories. “He has national cups,” his brother Mauro Cedillo has said these days. “He is my only family”, the boy pointed out, after explaining that his parents died, who has shared the search images with the phrase “your brother is waiting for you”. He was 22 years old and the oldest in the group. He was wearing a black shirt and jeans the day he disappeared, he was also carrying his pink Specialized bike.
Also, Dante works in a restaurant and had started a new window silicone business. He was wearing a black shirt the day he disappeared. “You don’t know the pain you are causing me knowing that you are no longer here. Everything changed from one day to the next, so many years of friendship, so many moments and so many stories that we had together, you taught me what the word loyalty means”, wrote his friend Juan Alberto, “I keep everything beautiful that we live, a person like you does not need prayers or masses because you are already in heaven accompanying your parents”.
Jaime Martinez Miranda
Jaime Adolfo Martínez Miranda in a photo shared on his social networks. COURTESY
His family and America: those were the two devotions of Jaime, 21, who had an image with his grandmother as his profile picture on Facebook, and on the cover, one with his mother and all his siblings. The boy, who worked as a bricklayer, regularly shared jokes and memes on the social network, as well as music by Featherweight and, especially, by Junior H. He was wearing black shorts, sandals and socks the day he disappeared.
“Jaime is a very happy boy, he loved to dance, he always had us smiling at any foolish thing he did, it was our joy, he was my little boy, he is my youngest brother,” said his sister Ana, his sister, who pleaded with the authorities to end the uncertainty.
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