Dissident Spotlight: Rosario Ibarra de Piedra
Rosario Ibarra spent much of her life fighting to find her disappeared son and the estimated 100,000 Mexicans who met the same fate.
Jesús Piedra Ibarra attended an anti-government protest in 1975. Military police arrested him, and according to the New York Times, he was last reported alive in 1984.
His mother, Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, spent the rest of her life looking for him. She didn’t just visit jails and prisons. Ibarra was able to confront Mexico’s president multiple times throughout her unsuccessful search for her son.
Two years after Jesús’ disappearance, Ibarra founded the Eureka Committee, an organization dedicated to finding other people disappeared at the government’s behest.
She ran for president in 1982 and 1988, the first woman to do so. While she lost, her crusade to uncover the identities of disappeared Mexican citizens made her a shining light in a country that was continuing the practice well into the 2000s.
(Investigative journalist Lydia Cacho wrote a memoir about the government trying to disappear her after she uncovered an international child sex trafficking ring. She was kidnapped in 2005.)
Iberra died in 2022 at the age of 95. Her daughter, Rosario Piedra, is the president of Mexico’s Human Rights Commission.
Political Backlash is Unpredictable
When an issue touches many lives, any citizen who was previously uninterested in politics can begin organizing. An issue as gut-wrenching as disappearing loved ones is particularly ripe for rallying ordinary people against a violent government.
The potential for backlash carries a warning for democratic representatives, too. Overreaching on cruel policies can create a new generation of people organizing to pry the party out of power.
However, failing to implement policies that help regular people — even imperfectly — can keep a viable opposition party from replacing the cruel leaders.
Iberra was 48 when her son disappeared. She spent almost half her life fighting the government and inspiring the younger dissidents in her country and abroad.
There’s no telling what backlash today’s failures are creating, or whether they’ll lead to inspirational dissidents or the next generation of monsters.