A grandmother's ordeal in the hands of Mexican kidnappers
April 12, 2016
In this June 17, 2015 photo, Yolanda Alvarez Antunez shows photos of her husband, Luis Alberto Castillo, during an interview at her home in Ahuehuepan, Mexico. On the morning of Jan. 10, 2013, Yolanda headed to Iguala to see if the public hospital had an appointment yet to treat her husband’s diabetic retinopathy. Luis Alberto stayed behind in Ahuehuepan to tend their small grocery store. That’s when a red pickup pulled up out front, and one of the men burst in, ordering Luis Alberto to come with them.
In this June 2, 2015 photo, Yolanda Alvarez Antunez holds up an image of her husband, Luis Alberto Ramirez Castillo, in Iguala, Mexico. Her husband was 54 years old when he was kidnapped by armed men outside of his home on Jan. 10, 2013. While trying to pay for the ransom, Yolanda herself was taken by the kidnappers and had to pay extra to be freed.
In this Aug. 25, 2015 photo, Yolanda Alvarez Antunez shows a copy of the leaflets she has been posting in the streets seeking information about her missing husband, who was kidnapped two years ago, in Iguala, Mexico. Beto, as he was called, was broad and tall, still strong at the age of 54. Rumored sightings of her husband reach her from time to time.
In this June 17, 2015 photo, Yolanda Alvarez Antunez enters her gated home and store, from where her husband was kidnapped two years ago, in Ahuehuepan, Mexico. He tried to resist and grabbed onto a pipe outside their small grocery store, a woman who watched from a few meters away told Yolanda later that day. When a second man got out of the truck and stuck a gun in his side, he stopped fighting.
In this May 31, 2015 photo, receiving an anonymous tip, relatives of missing people trek through a field in search of a possible clandestine grave, in Iguala, Mexico. Relatives of missing persons in the region have banded together to search for their lost family members. Since the government began excavating suspected graves found by this group scouring the surrounding mountains looking for their loved ones late last year, more than 100 bodies have been exhumed though most still await identification.
In this April 19, 2015 photo, Vicenta Hernandez Gomez sits in a plastic patio chair as she waits to submit a DNA sample to help in the search for her two missing sons, at a local museum that provided the space for a day to conduct the testing, in Iguala, Mexico. One son disappeared on March 1, 2013, and the second on Feb. 6, 2014. According to the government, almost 25,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since 2007 and a lucky few have survived kidnappings. Some have been recovered from mass graves; most remain missing.
In this June 17, 2015 photo, religious figures adorn the home of Yolanda Alvarez Antunez, in Ahuehuepan, Mexico. She still struggles to makes sense of a world in which good people routinely are abducted, where one victim survives and another does not. But there is no sense in this random violence, no victory in having made it home from her own kidnapping to suffer the eternal pain of her husband’s. So Yolanda turns to her faith.