Photo: Mariana Ávila Montejano.
The Berlin-based Die Tageszeitung (Taz) recently interviewed Mexican human rights defender Mariana Ávila Montejano in Hamburg.
Ávila Montejano tells Taz: “I am a political scientist, human rights activist and accompany people who are looking for their missing relatives. In 2014, I founded the Observatory on Social and Gender-Based Violence in Aguascalientes, a city located above Mexico City in the center of the country – primarily to draw attention to violence against women. But we were asked for help very early on in the search for forcibly disappeared people. From mothers, relatives, families – not only from Mexico, but also from Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.”
She further notes: “Thanks to the mediation of Peace Brigades International, I applied for a protection stay of the Elisabeth Selbert Initiative and was accepted. My situation in Aguascalientes has been extremely difficult over the past twelve months. My apartment was broken into, I changed my apartment three times, I was de facto on the run because I helped families find their disappeared, compiled documents, asked the authorities and police and thus also initiated one or the other raid.”
The full article can be read at: „Kartelle kommerzialisieren die Angst“ (Taz, August 27, 2026).
Mariana Ávila Montejano will be at the screening of the documentary “Toshkua” at the Abaton Cinema in Hamburg on August 31.
The Abaton website notes:
“The film ‘Toshkua’ (the word of the indigenous Pesh community living in Honduras for ‘disappearance’) accompanies the Honduran Mary in her search for her son Marco, who has been kidnapped on his way from Honduras to the USA. Over the course of her journey, she joins other mothers in Mexico who are looking for their children. Behind every single missing person is a family that searches and fights for clarification of the whereabouts of their relatives.
On Monday, August 31 at 5:30 p.m., after the film, there will be a conversation with Mary Martínez, mother of the disappeared Marco, director Ludovic Bonleux and Mariana Ávila Montejano (director of the Observatory for Social and Gender Violence in the Mexican city of Aguascalientes) about the disappearance in Mexico, the tireless efforts of the relatives and the reality of life for many Mexican Families.”
We continue to follow this.
