The images show young men wearing Mexico’s green national team jersey. A FIFA-style logo appears in the corner. The design mimics the collectible World Cup Panini stickers millions of soccer fans trade during the tournament.
But above each face taped to a concrete bench, utility pole or wall across downtown Guadalajara is a label:
“DESAPARECIDO.”
Missing.
One shows Christian Emmanuel Rivera, disappeared in August 2023. Another is Jaime Adrián Ramírez, missing since September 2020.
As Guadalajara hosts matches during the 2026 World Cup, families searching for missing relatives have transformed one of soccer’s most familiar images into a campaign to make Mexico’s 135,000 missing people visible to the tens of thousands of visitors.
The initiative was launched by Luz de Esperanza, a search collective in the western state of Jalisco, which leads Mexico in disappearances with more than 16,000 people listed as missing in the state’s registry. Members say other groups already have contacted them about adopting the idea.
“This is our way of drawing attention to the fact that we miss our children, that they are absent from our lives,” said María de Jesús Solís, 57, whose son Jaime Adrián disappeared nearly six years ago.
She wears a pendant bearing his photograph around her neck.
“This is my boy,” she said. “The difference is that now he’s wearing the World Cup shirt.”
Searching for the living
Across Mexico, relatives have formed search collectives that comb fields, ravines, abandoned buildings and clandestine graves, often carrying out searches they say authorities have failed to pursue.
Nearly every Sunday since 2021, members of Luz de Esperanza spread across Guadalajara carrying stacks of missing-person posters, hoping someone might recognize a face or provide a lead. The collective calls it a “search for the living.”
This month they replaced many of those flyers with hundreds of World Cup-inspired posters.
For Solís, the campaign reflects frustration with what families see as competing priorities.
“We’re not against the World Cup,” she said. “But we’re against the excessive spending.”
Authorities invested millions preparing Guadalajara for the tournament while search collectives often pay for their own water, food and transportation during searches, she said.
“The government is showing a beautiful face to the world,” Solís said. “But if you look around, the city is full of posters of our children.”
Digging for answers
On a recent morning, Solís and Guadalupe Rivera joined other members of Luz de Esperanza at an abandoned property on the outskirts of Guadalajara.
The women moved through dark rooms and into a backyard littered with garbage. Some carried metal probes used to test the ground for signs of clandestine graves.
Rivera pressed a steel rod into the soil while others inspected the property. Her son, Christian Emmanuel, disappeared nearly three years ago. She joined the collective almost immediately.
“I thought that if I joined a group, the search would move faster,” she said. “Time keeps passing, and I’m still searching.”
Rivera helps search for human remains because she wants to support other families, but hopes she doesn’t find her own son that way.
“I want to find him alive,” she said. “I want him to show up at my front door.”
The World Cup campaign, she said, grew from a simple calculation: if soccer dominates conversations across the city, perhaps it could also create space for people to notice those who are missing.
They are all sports fans, Rivera said.
“When it’s the World Cup, even if you’re not really a fan, you sit down at home and watch it with your family,” she said. “But our family isn’t whole anymore.”
Mixed reactions to the campaign
Some residents have embraced the posters, Rivera said. Others have argued that the World Cup should be a time for celebration rather than a reminder of violence and loss.
But families say they have little choice except to keep finding new ways to make their loved ones visible.
“The government never pays attention to us,” Rivera said. “So we want to see whether, this way, the world will.”
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