
Graciela is a mother and a human rights defender whose daughter, brother and three nephews disappeared in 2012 while they were traveling back to Tamaulipas in Mexico from the United States. “Since the day that I started searching, I have never stopped. I dedicated my life to searching for disappeared persons and defending the rights of their family members in Mexico,” she says. Graciela was awarded the 2017 annual Tulip Human Rights prize by the Dutch government. She is a founder of Milynali-Red CFC, a collective that helps to search for the disappeared, and a founding member of the Forensic Citizen Science project, which established the National Citizen Registry of Disappeared Persons in Mexico. “We need each other, the only way we can feel strong is by being there for each other,” she says. “We gather together, we breathe, and we continue to search.”