he murder of Patricia Negrete Tafoya, a member of the collective “A Promise to Keep,” provoked a new condemnation from human rights organizations, while Amnesty International (AI) urged the Mexican authorities this Thursday to reinforce protection measures for searchers and guarantee an investigation to clarify the crime.

Negrete Tafoya dedicated her work to locating her sister, Laura Angélica Negrete Tafoya, missing since 2021 in the municipality of Pénjamo, Guanajuato. In addition to the search for his family member, he accompanied other families facing the disappearance of loved ones in one of the entities hardest hit by this phenomenon.

According to the Attorney General's Office of the State of Guanajuato, the activist was attacked by gunfire last Tuesday. His body was located next to a motorcycle in the vicinity of the General Hospital of the Las Américas neighborhood. The authorities reported that an investigation file has already been opened to determine the motive for the homicide and identify those responsible.

They demand an investigation with a human rights perspective

Amnesty International maintained that the murder of Patricia Negrete should not be analyzed as an isolated event, but within the context of violence faced by people searching for missing relatives in Mexico. The organization asked the Guanajuato Prosecutor's Office to carry out an immediate, exhaustive, independent and impartial investigation that considers the search work carried out by the activist as a priority line.

Likewise, he demanded that both the material and intellectual authors of the crime be identified and punished, comprehensive reparation be guaranteed for the family, and efforts to locate Laura Angélica Negrete Tafoya continue. The organization also called on state and federal authorities to implement urgent and coordinated measures to guarantee the safety of groups of relatives of missing persons, noting that many of these people carry out work that corresponds to the State.

The National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico and IM-Defensoras also condemned the murder and noted that Patricia Negrete is the fifth female searcher murdered in the country during 2026 and the fourth in Guanajuato, an entity where, they stated, defenders face particularly high levels of violence.

Risks persist for those searching for missing relatives

Amnesty International warned in its most recent report that nine out of every ten searchers in Mexico are women and that 97% have suffered some type of violence, threat or harm derived from their work. According to the organization's figures, at least 35 searchers have been murdered in Mexico since 2011, of which 21 were women and 14 men. Guanajuato concentrates the highest number of murders of searchers recorded by AI, followed by Jalisco and Sinaloa.

For their part, human rights defense organizations indicated that, based on their own records, at least 23 women searching for missing relatives have been murdered since 2019, seven of them in Guanajuato, in addition to three other female searchers still missing.

The demand for justice occurs in the midst of the crisis of disappearances that Mexico faces. According to the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons, the country exceeds 133,000 missing people, a figure that maintains pressure on the authorities to strengthen the search, protection and access to justice mechanisms for thousands of families who continue to search for their loved ones.