Maximina Hernández Maldonado from Mexico

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Maximina’s son worked as a policeman in the municipality of Santa Catarina in Nuevo León, Mexico. On his way to work on 2 May 2007, he was taken in a van by armed men. “I am torn into pieces, I need to search for him, I want to be with my other children, and I need to work harder because my son supported our family financially,” Maximina says. “I wanted to find my son. Every day I went to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, sometimes I walked because I did not even have money to pay for the bus, but I showed up.” Maximina joined other women who are searching for their disappeared police-officer offspring. “We created AMORES: Group of Women Organized by the Executed, Kidnapped and Disappeared of Nuevo Leon. We have succeeded in passing laws, and that is important, because with the laws there is tangible progress,” she says, adding that, “If we are alone, the authorities ignore us, but if we are together we can achieve more. Sometimes they tell us that our children are dead, but as long as we don’t have proof we will keep searching for them.”