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Their Handiwork Helps Families Locate Their Missing
The women of Torreón, Mexico make tortillas to help fund their search for their loved ones
The trick is to roll the dough into round balls that all weigh the same. It’s only the fourth day since the tortillería opened in the city of Torreón in northern Mexico, but Viviana Hernández and Guadalupe Castellano have already found the secret to making the perfect, round tortillas de harina.
Making tortillas de harina with a machine is not the same as making them by hand. Our abuelas, their hands glowing from the lard, flattened the testales (the small dough balls) with a wooden roller, and threw them on the comal. We little ones would ask to flip them — without burning our fingers — as if doing so was one of the most important rites of passage. With the machine, it’s definitely easier, but reaching the right size of the testales is key.
Once they figured out the process with the machine, tortilla production surged up. The first day, Hernández and Castellano prepared 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of dough — around 500 tortillas — but high demand motivated them to add 5 kg (11 lbs) the second day. For the coming week, they will aim for 20 kg (44 lbs), about 70 packages with ten tortillas each. If production swells, and sales increase, then the group, Victims for their Disappeared in Action (Grupo VIDA), will be able to cover the costs of its most important activity: the field search of hidden mass graves and the recovery of missing human remains.
Over 40,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since the so-called “war on drugs” began in 2006, and the slow response from authorities and lack of governmental support — along with high levels of corruption and impunity — have forced thousands of families of those missing people to come together to search for their loved ones. There are many family associations throughout the country, but in Torreón, the Grupo VIDA — meaning “life” in Spanish — has found dozens of clandestine cemeteries and thousands of charred human remains since 2015, making the group a safe space for its almost 150 families who gather to support each other and, as they often say, share the same dolor (pain).
Apart from shattering family ties, enforced…
