EP05 The Monster | English

Héctor Flores’ life changed forever when he learned that his son, Dani, had disappeared.Dani was one of over 8,000 people to go missing in his hometown of Guadalajara, and one of 130,000 around Mexico, where that word, “disappeared,” has become part of everyday life. In Guadalajara, most of those cases are blamed on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which uses disappearances as a tool to exert social control, intimidate the population, punish people, and even recruit new members.But for Héctor, that explanation did not fit his son’s story. As he began gathering clues on his own, he started to suspect that the reality could be more complex and more disturbing: that the very authorities who were supposed to protect his son and search for him may have been behind his disappearance.We visited Héctor at his bunker-like home, where he has installed cameras, locks, and reinforced walls after years of intense harassment linked to his search for his son. From there, we retraced Héctor and Dani’s story and explored some uncomfortable questions: What happens when families lose trust in the very institutions responsible for searching for their loved ones? Could the state be enabling disappearances?