MEXICO CITY – A scandal involving the kidnapping and exploitation of young children in a Mexican colonial city popular with tourists expanded on Wednesday when prosecutors revealed additional evidence that an adult apparently used other children to help kidnap a child. missing for 2 years.
The search for Dylan Esaú Gómez Pérez led prosecutors in the southern state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, to a house in San Cristóbal de las Casas where 23 kidnapped children were in deplorable conditions and forced to sell trinkets and handicrafts on the street.
But Dylan, who turns 3 in November, was not among them.
Reviewing surveillance cameras, state prosecutor Jorge Llaven said a boy and girl, both apparently about 12 years old, were seen talking to a suspected woman in the June 30 kidnapping. Llaven identified the woman as “Ofelia” and offered her a reward of $ 13,500 for information on the location of her or the missing child.
In camera photos, the boy and girl enter the public market where Dylan’s mother worked in the colonial city. Dylan seems to follow the boy, and then the girl grabs Dylan by the back of his jacket and leaves the market with him. Later, the girl is seen returning alone, apparently handing over the missing boy to someone else.
Llaven said Tuesday that a search conducted Monday, apparently related to Dylan’s disappearance, had revealed a house where children, most between the ages of 2 and 15 but three babies between the ages of 3 and 20 months, were forced to sell. things on the street.
“In addition, they were forced to return with a certain minimum amount of money for the right to obtain food and a place to sleep in the house,” Llaven said.
San Cristóbal is a picturesque and strongly indigenous city that is popular with tourists. It is not uncommon to see children and adults selling local handicrafts such as carvings and embroidered fabrics in its narrow cobbled streets.
But few visitors to the city suspected that some of the children they sold had been taken from their families.
The Chiapas state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the children “were forced by physical and psychological violence to sell handicrafts in the city center,” adding that the children showed signs of “malnutrition and precarious conditions.”
According to the video presented by prosecutors, many of them slept on what appeared to be cardboard sheets and blankets on a concrete floor. Three other women have been detained in that case and may face charges of human trafficking and forced labor.
Dylan was with his mother, Juana Pérez, at the market the day he was kidnapped.
Pérez, who traveled to Mexico City to ask President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to help her find her son, works in the market selling fruits and vegetables. She said her son sometimes walked away to play, but that no child had ever been snatched from the market before.
The boy’s father migrated to California to find a job, and therefore 23-year-old Perez had to take care of Dylan and his sister alone.
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