She didn't like her name, which is why when some of the colleagues from the search mothers collective were questioned about Lorenza's kidnapping, they said they didn't know her.
They called Lorenza Cano Flores Lore, that's what her colleagues and acquaintances affectionately called her.
She is 55 years old and since 2018 she belongs to the collective Salamanca Unidos Searching Desaparecidos, which she joined when her brother, José Francisco, disappeared.
On the night of January 15, an armed commando entered her house in Salamanca, Guanajuato, murdered her son and her husband, and took her away.
A week later, with no news from Lorenza or any trace of her attacker, her colleagues have once again felt the fear and terror of the lack of protection of those who, like them, search in the State for a missing loved one.
Lorenza Cano Flores, in an image spread on social networks.
The neighborhood where Lorenza Cano and her family lived, in the south of the city of Salamanca (273,417 inhabitants), is a labyrinth of paved streets and winding dirt roads.
Very close, between one and the other, you can see the Petróleos Mexicanos refinery, which frames the horizon with a burner that never goes out, a lit flame that indicates that the petrochemical complex continues to operate.
On one of the unpaved streets, a two-story brown house stands just a few steps away from where a Community Hearts center has been operating for a couple of months, the program that the municipal government has launched “to promote the reconstruction of the social fabric”, through recreational activities focused on vulnerable populations.
Last Monday night, a group of armed men entered the house and murdered Miguel Ángel, 24 years old, son of Lorenza Cano, and Miguel, 54, her husband.
The young man, according to information from local authorities, lived in the city, while his father—who was traveling back and forth to the United States for work—was visiting.
Julio César Ernesto Prieto Gallardo, municipal president of Salamanca, has recounted how around 9:40 p.m. that night, the local police responded to the incident and began the search for those allegedly responsible in the surroundings of the city;
Cameras in the area were reviewed, notification was given to the different security forces present, however, until now there is no indication about Lorenza's captors or the motive for what happened.
A street in front of the refinery in Salamanca.Alicia Vera
The Moreno mayor has reported that until now, and despite the seriousness of the case and the echo it has had in the country - with more than 100,000 people missing - the Government of Salamanca and the State - led by the PAN member Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo — have not had any type of communication: “Our relationship is limited.
To date we have not had contact with the Prosecutor's Office, we will only have it next Monday to see how we coordinate on what they consider,” he says.
Surrounded by a group of six people from his Administration, sitting at a long table, and with the screens of the Command, Control, Communication and Computing Center (C4) in the background, Mayor Prieto Gallardo explains that it is not the responsibility of the municipal government to carry out carry out the search for missing people, but until they have in their possession the file with the basic data of the reports: “The Prosecutor's Office team arrived at 11:00 p.m. and they are in charge of the issue of the homicide and kidnapping investigation. .
It took a day for the State Search Commission to issue the file and for us to be able to act, even though when we responded to the report we did search for the people who took Lorenza,” he says.
“Today it was Lorenza and tomorrow it could be you”
Martha Alicia Peñaflor, a member of the Salamanca Unidos Collective Searching for Missing Persons, hangs a photo of a missing young woman on the Tree of Hope in the main garden of Salamanca, Guanajuato, on January 19, 2024. Alicia Vera
Photographs of murdered and missing people in the city hang from the branches of two leafy trees planted right in front of the Salamanca municipal office.
However, they do not represent the same thing.
The first, in which red fabric hearts also appear - in reference to the municipal program - and which is surrounded by metal fences and signs of the National System for the Comprehensive Development of the Family (DIF), are the cases of intentional homicides. explains Alma Lilia Tapia, leader of the group of searchers to which Lorenza Cano and her daughter, Laura, also belonged.
On the other tree, a few steps away, are the laminated photographs of the missing people from the bus.
Among them is that of a dark-skinned man, with a long mustache and a red shirt: it is José Francisco Cano Flores.
Lorenza Cano, a happy and smiling woman, “just as you can see in the photograph on her file,” cooked for her colleagues and sent food and snacks to the brigades that went out to search.
She did not go to all the searches, a problem with her hip prevented her from walking comfortably, and made it difficult for her to travel the long distances and difficult terrain that female searchers usually go to, but Laura, her daughter, always went.
Laura was the one who approached the group and together with her mother they began to look for José Francisco.
Lorenza's brother, whom the searchers refer to as "Chepe", disappeared on August 17, 2018, in almost the same way as his sister: they entered his house for him and took him, according to Alma Lilia Tapia. .
Shortly after, José Francisco's partner was also kidnapped, and although the searchers do not know about the woman's family, they are hopeful that, when they manage to find José Francisco, they will also have news about his partner.
Photos of missing people on the tree in the main garden.
Alicia Vera
The searchers count more than 260 families that make up their group.
Right now they are searching for 206 missing persons in Salamanca, among them, Martha Alicia Peñaflor's son, Moisés Jared González Peñaflor, 20 years old, disappeared in December 2022. Peñaflor, like the vast majority of women who search in every corner of Mexico to his loved ones, he has lost his job and has dedicated his entire energy to searching for his son.
The kidnapping of her partner, Lorenza, has only caused her intense pain and increased uncertainty about the future of the searchers.
“What I felt is that today it could be Lorenza, and tomorrow you.
It's staggering again because you no longer know where she's going to hit you
from
.
We have to search, we have to continue,” she says with latent sadness.
For Alma Lilia, the kidnapping of Lorenza and the murder of her son and husband does not respond to her activity as a searcher, and she is too worried that the other women in the group feel so affected and scared by what happened to her partner. .
The leader of the group assures that the motive - which has not yet been clarified by the authorities - responds more to the insecurity that the municipality has been experiencing for many years, and the increase in the presence of criminal groups that have transformed the dynamics of the city. with practices such as extortion.
The security crisis that plagues Salamanca
The Mexican Army patrols the city of Salamanca, Guanajuato, on January 20, 2024. Alicia Vera
Alma Lilia Tapia thought that her son Gustavo Daryl Gómez was the first missing person in the country: “I didn't know anything about this before.
“I thought the only ones missing were the 43 [from Ayotzinapa],” she says.
The leader of one of three collectives of search mothers working in Salamanca, she searches, along with a small group of women, in a vacant lot near the city center.
She receives messages on her cell phone from all kinds of people.
While digging the ground with a rod, cloth gloves, and boots that she bought herself to be able to walk in difficult terrain, she takes photographs and sends audio and videos to Search Commission personnel who guide her in identifying what they are finding.
Through this device they also communicate to her, she assures, from prisons or other unknown places, about the points where she can find human remains or evidence of them.
Sometimes it is not just information, but threats veiled by what she does, or by the visibility they achieve in the city: they put up huge signs in public squares, portraits of missing women on every corner of the city.
It tells of the times when a mother found her son's remains in a clearing after two years;
or the time when another colleague wanted to hang herself from one of the trees in front of the municipal presidency to demand that they expedite the investigations into the disappearance of her son.
They are always alert.
“In this city, anyone can give notice to criminal groups,” they say between voices.
In 2018, the shooting of six municipal traffic police officers dealt a severe blow to the local police force, from which it has been difficult to recover.
Alma Lilia Tapia, mother Daryl Gómez, young man missing in Salamanca, Guanajuato.Nayeli Cruz
On September 23, Alejandro Flores Jiménez resigned from the position of general director of Public Security of Salamanca, after just over a year of assuming the position.
The colonel's decision responded at the time to “personal reasons,” later he corrected and told the local press: “The fundamental basis for my resignation was because I stopped seeing support from the Municipality towards Public Security, there was not enough support for have the guarantees of remaining in command.”
Since then, no one has assumed that position.
The organization Common Cause documented that in 2018, 452 police officers were murdered in Mexico, 66 of them in Guanajuato.
In 2019, 446 were murdered and 73 occurred in that same State.
In 2020, the number increased to 524 in the country, and of that figure 84 were in that same entity.
Currently, the Mexican Army and the National Guard have deployed their elements in the city of Salamanca due to the lack of a local security structure that helps contain the high rates of violence and crime.
So far in 2024 – just 20 days – they have attended to 14 homicides.
In this scenario, the searcher mothers ask only two things: that they be allowed to continue with their journeys and that they be given the support and security to overcome the insecurity and danger of death that the work of searching for their missing people means in Mexico.
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