The three disappeared women: Marina Pérez Ríos, Maritza Pérez Ríos and Dora Alicia Cervantes.RR SS
The last day they were heard from was February 25.
Since then, there is no information on where the Americans Maritza and Marina Pérez Ríos and Dora Alicia Cervantes Sáenz are.
The Nuevo León Prosecutor's Office has confirmed that the trail of the women was lost when they were going in a truck from China to Montemorelos, both municipalities of this Mexican state.
The women had crossed from Texas a day earlier.
In these two weeks without news, four other US citizens disappeared in Tamaulipas and the media noise of their kidnapping allowed them to be found —two of them already dead— in record time.
However, no progress has been made in the discovery of the three women.
The Pérez Ríos sisters and their friend Dora Alicia Cervantes, residents of Peñitas, a small town near McAllen, in the US, crossed into Mexico to sell clothes in a market, according to the Peñitas police chief, Roel Bermea.
The agent explained that he was the husband of one of the women who filed the missing person's report on February 27 after not being able to contact his wife all weekend.
The women, who are 47, 48 and 53 years old, were traveling in a green Chevy Silverado toward the city of Montemorelos, which is about a three-hour drive from the border.
The search operations are also being carried out in collaboration with the Tamaulipas Prosecutor's Office, since the disappearance area borders between the two States.
However, a spokesman for the Neoleonese agency has indicated that at the moment "there is no official collaboration from the FBI."
That the three disappeared women are residents of the United States, but not born there, is the reason provided by the Prosecutor's Office to explain why the FBI "has not intervened informally."
The alleged route that the women were going to do barely exceeds 200 kilometers.
Peñitas is practically on the border with Mexico.
The Customs Office has confirmed that the three Americans crossed on the 24th. According to the first information, it is proven that they arrived in China, some 120 kilometers from their place of origin.
It is on the road from there to Montemorelos where they lose track.
The Nuevo León Prosecutor's Office has affirmed that the search for the women is daily and that the area has been reviewed with drones and dogs, although for the moment without success.
The institution has also affirmed that the women do not correspond to any of the four charred bodies that were located on February 25, 2023 inside a truck in China, in the direction of Reynosa, in Tamaulipas.
The media attention that this case has received contrasts with that of the four young people who were kidnapped in Matamoros.
Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown, Eric Williams and Latavia Washington McGee crossed from Brownsville into Mexico on March 3 and just a couple of hours later they were intercepted by members of organized crime, who shot them and took them away in a pickup truck.
When the FBI announced that they were US citizens and offered a $50,000 reward for information on their whereabouts, the entire Mexican machinery began to work.
The US pressure took effect and in less than 48 hours they had located the young people in a wooden hut near Baghdad beach.
Woodard and Brown had died, although the official cause of death has not yet been released.
Williams had been shot three times in the legs, and McGee was uninjured.
“We are not going to rest until the culprits face justice,” said Ambassador Ken Salazar.
This case was about to generate a diplomatic conflict between Mexico and the United States, and even caused Republican congressmen to request the entry of the US Army into Mexico, which was categorically rejected by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
While the political noise continues, there is no news from Maritza, Marina and Dora Alicia.
In Mexico seven women disappear every day.
subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS México
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country