On Christmas Eve 2024, Elianis Caridad Morejón Pérez, a young Cuban woman, told her mother by phone that she had put on a life jacket and was boarding a boat to travel from southern Mexico toward the United States . It was her final message from San José El Hueyate, a town in the state of Chiapas, before disappearing alongside 39 other migrants from Cuba, Honduras and Ecuador while traveling a maritime route known as one of the most dangerous paths used by smugglers.

Earlier this month her mother, Isis Pérez, arrived in that same village near the Guatemalan border to search for her, alongside other relatives of the disappeared.…