In this Oct. 20, 2015 photo, Mario Vergara pinches the skin on his hand as he stands in a field where dozens of bodies were found buried in clandestine graves, on the outskirts of Iguala, Mexico. Mario is searching for his brother, Tomas, missing since July 5, 2012. The first time the men and women in Iguala went out to dig for their missing relatives, they didn’t know anything. “We knew we were going to look for buried bodies, but we never imagined that was what we would find, " said Vergara, "What we saw broke us.” He has yet to find his brother. 

In this May 31, 2015 photo, relatives of missing people ride on the back of a pick-up truck as they head to a site of a possible clandestine grave after they received an anonymous tip, in Iguala, Mexico. The expeditions began shortly after 43 students from a rural teachers college were detained by police in Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014 and vanished. 

In this April 22, 2015 photo, Bertha Moreno, who is searching for her missing son, Jose Manuel, walks a path lined with over dried thicket, on the outskirts of Iguala, Mexico. Moreno is part of a group of relatives in the region that have banded together to search for their missing relatives. Moreno lost her job cleaning the house of a teacher, who said that the grave diggers were troublemakers putting everyone in danger in a region dominated by drug traffickers. Moreno pushed back. “‘How are we troublemakers if we’re looking for our relatives?’” she said. “And she fired me.”

In this May 31, 2015 photo, relatives of missing people search for signs of a possible clandestine grave after they received an anonymous tip, in Iguala, Mexico. Miguel Angel Jimenez, an activist and community police officer, taught the searchers to look for campsites, because traffickers often held their victims for ransom before killing them, he said, and the graves could be close by. 

In this May 31, 2015 photo, a relative of missing people smells the end of a stick she stuck into the ground as she and others search for signs of a possible clandestine grave, in Iguala, Mexico. Authorities quickly prohibited relatives from digging up the graves themselves, saying they had broken bones and contaminated crime scenes. But the families have not stop looking. Instead, they started using metal rods as a detection device: they pushed a rod into the ground and if it smelled when they removed it, they knew they had a grave to mark with a flag for authorities.

n this April 22, 2015 photo, Bertha Moreno, who is searching for her son, Jose Manuel, checks a stone for discoloration during a search for clandestine graves, on the outskirts of Iguala, Mexico. Moreno is among those who have given up Sunday Mass and dozy afternoons with family to search for her son. She believes God will forgive the lapse in her religious duties and protect her, even if her husband does not agree with her decision to risk the wrath of gangsters who are likely responsible for so many disappearances. 

In this Oct. 20, 2015 photo, a family listens to Mario Vergara as they reach out to find information about their missing relative at the San Gerardo church, in Iguala, Mexico. Mario is one of the leaders of a group of families searching for missing relatives. Emboldened by the national uproar over the disappearance of 43 college students, hundreds of families came out of a scared silence to report kidnappings for the first time, adding names to a list of 26,000 missing nationwide.

In this Dec. 1, 2015 photo, Mario Vergara, who is searching for his missing brother, attends a meeting with other relatives of missing persons as he stands next to a whiteboard used to keep track of bodies found and donations made to the group, in Iguala, Mexico. “We knew we were going to look for buried bodies, but we never imagined that was what we would find,” said Vergara. “What we saw broke us.”

In this Dec. 1, 2015 photo, relatives of missing people leaf through a binder filled with images and information of missing people, inside the basement of the the San Gerardo church, in Iguala. Emboldened by a national uproar over the 43 rural college students who vanished, and eager to find their own relatives, about 30 people gathered at the first meeting in the basement of the San Gerardo church, where each family told a story worse than the next about how their relatives went to work one day and never came home, or how armed men took them from their homes, or how they were last seen at police roadblocks, and then never heard from again.

In this May 31, 2015 photo, Mario Vergara examines a patch of earth as he and others search for signs of a possible clandestine grave after they received an anonymous tip, in Iguala, Mexico. Before suspending the search for the summer rainy season, the group of family members searching for their missing relatives had located more than 60 clandestine graves with the remains of 104 people, all but 13 of them still unidentified. Since resuming the hunt, they have found 11 more bodies.

In this Sept. 4, 2015 photo, Gerardo Alcocer stands next to the family vault containing the remains of his son, Gerardo Alberto, at the cemetery in Huitzuco, Mexico. Gerardo Alberto was 28 when he disappeared on April 12, 2013. His parents are among the few families that have gotten some kind of closure to the tragedy of their son's disappearance. A few months ago, the Attorney General's Office confirmed through DNA tests that they had found his remains in a clandestine grave containing two other bodies. Their son is among the more than 26,000 Mexicans who have disappeared since 2007, according to the government’s count.

In this Sept. 4, 2015 photo, Gerardo Alcocer stands outside the family vault containing the remains of his son, Gerardo Alberto, at the cemetery in Huitzuco, Mexico. The remains of his son were among those recovered on that first excursion in the search of “the other disappeared.” Alcocer’s epilepsy prevented him from joining the search parties. He is grateful for their efforts, though they brought heartache. “In life, children are supposed to bury their parents not the other way around,” Alcocer said. “And it feels awful, too awful.” 

In this Sept. 4, 2015 photo, the parents of Gerardo Alberto Alcocer leave the local cemetery, after visiting their son's grave, in Huitzuco, Mexico. The remains of their son were among those recovered on that first excursion in the search of “the other disappeared.” Alcocer’s epilepsy prevented him from joining the search parties. He is grateful for their efforts, though they brought heartache. “In life, children are supposed to bury their parents not the other way around,” Alcocer said. “And it feels awful, too awful.”