Mexican searcher for the disappeared survives attack in Sinaloa: ‘They wanted to kill me’

Alma Rosa Rojo was on her way to a print shop on Saturday. Her daughter, Yesenia, was driving. The Mexican activist, known for her work searching for the disappeared, had her seven-year-old granddaughter on her lap. Her 12-year-old granddaughter was riding in the back seat. Rojo saw two men in another vehicle overtake them, make a U-turn and block their path. One of the men got out, opened the door and fired directly at them. It was another episode in the daily violence that has gripped Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, which has been gripped by a security crisis for the past two years.“The granddaughter on my lap put her hands out in front of her, as if trying to stop the bullets. I grabbed her and threw myself to one side, but that’s when I was hit. The bullet went through my arm and lodged in my back,” Alma Rosa tells EL PAÍS. Rojo is one of the pioneers of the movement to search for the disappeared in Sinaloa and has been looking for her brother Miguel Ángel since 2009. He was abducted by a group of men in Pueblos Unidos while on his way to buy water.“There were eight shots and they were all aimed at me,” Rojo adds. The bullets pierced part of the hood and shattered the windshield, scattering glass across Jesús Silva Herzog Avenue in southern Culiacán.One of the bullets passed through her left arm and traveled across her upper back before becoming lodged near the top of her spine, where a small bulge can be seen.“They had already stopped shooting at us when one of my granddaughters lifted her head, and they fired two more shots,” recounts Rojo. “I have the bullet in my back; they couldn’t remove it. The doctors left it there. Maybe later they’ll be able to take it out.” The targeted attack took place just a block from the home of one of her daughters, in the Esthela Ortiz neighborhood. The area has been under heavy military presence since September 2024, when a bloody internal conflict erupted within the Sinaloa Cartel between the Los Chapitos and Los Mayitos factions.The Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office has classified the shooting as a targeted attack and is investigating it as an attempted femicide. Prosecutors believe it may be linked to Rojo’s work as a search activist. So far, no arrests have been made in connection with the attack.The neighborhood is one of the cartel’s areas of interest, as it has served as a base for street-level drug sales in the city and has also been used to forcibly recruit members. It had recently become a particular flashpoint after two hairstylists were killed there, prompting authorities to strengthen the military presence. Some of the 300 troops deployed on August 25 by President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration to bolster the security strategy were sent to the area.‘They were already waiting for us’Rojo was attacked while on her way to print photographs of her brother’s face. The pictures were to be tied with yellow ribbons to a tree that she and other search activists have named the “Tree of Hope.” It was the eve of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.“Before leaving the house, we saw a young man on a motorcycle ride past three times. He stopped in front of us, but we didn’t imagine they were already waiting for us,” says Rojo.Her daughter Yesenia offered to drive her to the print shop. She grabbed the car keys, and they set off with the two girls. “As we passed, I saw a car parked by the little soccer field with some young men in it. We drove by, and they sped up,” she says.Alma Rosa feared the granddaughter sitting on her lap had died in her arms or that her sister had been hit. Both escaped unharmed. The younger child suffered only minor injuries, while the older one managed to curl up and drop to the floor of the vehicle. The bullets struck the seat.Yesenia, behind the wheel, was wounded on her left side. She managed to throw herself to the floor, but one of the bullets grazed her. She says she had heard gunfire before and imagined it as one of those sounds that could leave a person deaf. But now, as a survivor, she describes it differently: not as something you hear, but something you feel, a wave of heat moving through your body.The shooting had barely stopped when she threw the car into reverse, backing up until it crashed into a mound of dirt.“We think the men probably assumed we were already dead and that the car drove off on its own,” she says. The women heard the men start the engine of their car and drive away. That’s when the girls opened the doors and ran inside the house.All four of them are out of danger. Alma Rosa and Yesenia keep replaying every moment, trying to understand why they were attacked. They do not know whether it was linked to the eve of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the spiraling violence that has gripped Culiacán for the past two years, the fact that they are women, or simply that they were seen as defenseless.There is only one thing Alma Rosa is certain of: “They wanted to kill me.”Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition