'She was almost like a Batman figure': Mexico's fearless Mother Courage.

For elements with `data-print-layout=”hide”`, the `ul` elements have no background image.

The font `Guardian Headline Full` is loaded in several styles:

– Light (weight 300, normal style)
– Light Italic (weight 300, italic style)
– Regular (weight 400, normal style)
– Regular Italic (weight 400, italic style)
– Medium (weight 500, normal style)

Each font is sourced from the Guardian’s asset server in WOFF2, WOFF, and TTF formats.Here is the rewritten text in fluent, natural English:

“`css
@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 500;
font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 500;
font-style: italic;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 600;
font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 600;
font-style: italic;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 700;
font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 700;
font-style: italic;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 900;
font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Headline Full’;
src: url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/full-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: 900;
font-style: italic;
}

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Guardian Titlepiece’;
src: url(‘https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff2’) format(‘woff2’),
url(‘https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff’) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
font-weight: bold;
font-style: normal;
}
“`The font file “tlepiece-Bold.ttf” is in TrueType format. It uses a weight of 700 and a normal style.

On devices with iOS or Android, the following styles apply:
– The dark background is set to #1a1a1a.
– The feature color is #c70000.
– The dark mode feature color is #ff5943.
– The new pillar color uses the primary pillar variable, or falls back to the feature color.

If the user’s system prefers dark color schemes on iOS or Android, the new pillar color switches to the dark mode pillar variable, or falls back to the dark mode feature color.

On iOS and Android, when the first element in an article container (feature, standard, or comment) is an atom followed by a paragraph (or a sign-in gate and then a paragraph), the first letter of that paragraph is colored using the secondary pillar variable, or defaults to black (#000).

On iOS and Android, the article header in feature, standard, and comment containers has a height of zero.

On iOS and Android, the furniture wrapper in these article containers has padding of 4 pixels on top and 10 pixels on the sides. Inside it, the content labels use bold font weight, the font family “Guardian Headline, Guardian Egyptian Web, Guardian Headline Full, Georgia, serif”, the new pillar color, and are capitalized.

Also on iOS and Android, the headline (h1) inside the furniture wrapper has a font size of 32 pixels, bold weight, 12 pixels of bottom padding, and is colored #121212.For the `.furniture-wrapper figure.element-image` inside `#feature-article-container`, `#standard-article-container`, and `#comment-article-container` on iOS and Android devices, the image is positioned relatively with a top margin of 14px and a left margin of -10px. Its width is set to `calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px))`, and its height is automatic.

On iOS and Android, for the same containers, the `.figure__inner`, `img`, and `a` elements inside `.furniture-wrapper figure.element-image` have a transparent background. Their width is also `calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px))`, and their height is forced to be automatic (`auto!important`).

For the `.standfirst` inside these containers on iOS and Android, there is a top padding of 4px, a bottom padding of 24px, and a right margin of -10px.

The paragraphs inside `.standfirst__inner p` in these containers on iOS and Android use the font family: `Guardian Headline, Guardian Egyptian Web, Guardian Headline Full, Georgia, serif`.

Finally, for links (`a`) and list item links (`li a`) inside `.standfirst__inner` in these containers on iOS and Android, the styling applies to both regular links and those within list items.Here’s the rewritten CSS in fluent, natural English:

For Android devices, links inside `.standfirst__inner a` within `#comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper` should use the new pillar color, have no background image, be underlined with a 6px offset, use a border color defined by `–headerBorder` (or `#dcdcdc` as fallback), and have no bottom border.

On iOS and Android, when hovering over links (or links inside list items) in `.standfirst__inner` within any of these containers—`#feature-article-container`, `#standard-article-container`, or `#comment-article-container`—the underline color should change to the new pillar color.

For both iOS and Android, the `.meta` section inside `.furniture-wrapper` in all three container types should have no margin.

Also on both platforms, the following elements inside `.meta` within those containers should use the new pillar color:
– `.byline`
– `.byline__author`
– `span.byline__author a`
– `.meta__byline span`

Finally, on both iOS and Android, `.meta__misc` inside `.furniture-wrapper` in all three container types should also have no margin.Here’s the rewritten version in fluent, natural English:

“`css
isc {
padding: 0;
}

/ For iOS and Android: style the SVG icons in the furniture wrapper /
body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg {
stroke: var(–new-pillar-colour);
}

/ For iOS and Android: style the caption button in showcase elements /
body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button {
display: flex;
padding: 5px;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
width: 28px;
height: 28px;
right: 14px;
}

/ For iOS and Android: add padding to the article body /
body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body,
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body,
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body,
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body,
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body {
padding: 0 12px;
}

/ For iOS and Android: style non-thumbnail, non-immersive images in the article body /
body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) {
margin: 0;
width: calc(100vw – 24px – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px));
height: auto;
}

/ For iOS and Android: remove padding from the caption of those images /
body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption {
padding: 0;
}

/ For iOS and Android: make immersive images full width /
body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive {
width: calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px));
}

/ For iOS and Android: style quoted blockquotes in the prose /
body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before {
/ Add your styles here /
}
“`Here’s the rewritten version in fluent, natural English:

“`css
ner .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before {
color: var(–new-pillar-colour);
}

body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a,
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a {
color: var(–primary-pillar);
background-image: none;
text-decoration: underline;
text-underline-offset: 6px;
text-decoration-color: var(–headerBorder);
}

body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,
body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,
body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,
body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,
body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,
body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover {
text-decoration-color: var(–new-pillar-colour);
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper {
background-color: #1a1a1a;
}

body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels {
color: var(–new-pillar-colour);
}

body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline {
background-color: unset;
color: var(–headerBorder) !important;
}

body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p {
color: var(–headerBorder);
}

body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,
body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,
body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,
body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,
body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,
body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,
body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,
body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .me
}
“`The following CSS rules apply to various article containers on iOS and Android:

– For `.byline__author` and related author link elements inside article containers on Android, the text color is set to `var(–new-pillar-colour)`.

– For SVG icons in the `meta__misc` section of article containers on both iOS and Android, the stroke color is set to `var(–new-pillar-colour)`.

– For figure captions inside `element-image.element–showcase` in article containers on both iOS and Android, the text color is set to `var(–dateline)`.

– For quoted blockquotes inside the article body’s prose section on both iOS and Android, the text color is set to `var(–new-pillar-colour)`.

– For the main content areas (like `#article-body>div`, `.content–interactive>div`, `#feature-body`, `[data-gu-name=body]`, and `#comment-body`) in all article containers on both iOS and Android, the background color is set to `var(–darkBackground)` with `!important`.

– For the first letter of paragraphs that follow an `.element-atom` (or `.element-atom` combined with `.sign-in-gate` or `#sign-in-gate`) inside the main content areas on iOS, a specific style is applied (though the style itself is not fully defined in the provided text).Here is the rewritten text in fluent, natural English:

On iOS, the first letter of a paragraph that comes right after an element atom (or after a sign-in gate that follows an element atom) should be styled in a special way. This applies in several places within feature articles, standard articles, and comment articles. Specifically, it applies in the interactive content area, the feature body, the section marked with `data-gu-name=”body”`, and the comment body.

The same rule applies on Android for the first letter of a paragraph that comes after an element atom in the feature article body.Here’s the rewritten version in fluent, natural English:

On Android devices, the first letter of certain paragraphs should use the pillar color (or white as a fallback). This applies to paragraphs that come right after an element atom in various sections of feature, standard, and comment article containers. Specifically, it includes paragraphs following an element atom inside interactive content areas, feature bodies, comment bodies, and sections marked with `data-gu-name=”body”`. It also covers cases where a sign-in gate appears between the element atom and the paragraph.For iOS and Android comment articles, the standfirst inside the furniture wrapper has a top padding of 24px and no top margin. The `h2` text in the prose section is set to 24px.

On iOS, the caption button in feature, standard, and comment article containers has padding of 6px on top and bottom, and 5px on left and right. On Android, the same button has 4px padding on top and bottom, and 4px on left and right.

In dark mode (when the system prefers a dark color scheme and no light scheme is set), the following colors are used:
– Follow text: `#dcdcdc`
– Follow icon fill: uses the dark mode pillar color
– Standfirst text: `#dcdcdc`
– Standfirst link text: uses the dark mode pillar color
– Standfirst link border: uses the dark mode pillar color
– Byline: uses the dark mode pillar color

The root variable `–darkBackground` is set to `#1a1a1a`.

For iOS and Android, the article header in feature, standard, and comment article containers is hidden (opacity set to 0). The furniture wrapper has no margin. The content labels inside the furniture wrapper use the new pillar color (or the dark mode feature color as a fallback). The headline (`h1`) inside the furniture wrapper is colored `#dcdcdc`. Links in the article header or title section use the new pillar color (or the dark mode feature color as a fallback). The meta section (identified by `#meta` or `[data-gu-name=meta]`) has no top border or padding.Here’s the rewritten version in fluent, natural English:

For the meta section inside the furniture wrapper in feature, standard, and comment article containers on Android, a repeating linear gradient is used as the background image. It uses the header border color for a 1-pixel line, followed by a transparent gap of 3 pixels.

On both iOS and Android, the byline text in the meta section of these article containers is colored #dcdcdc.

Links in the meta section on both platforms use a color defined by the variable `–new-pillar-colour`, or fall back to `–darkModeFeature`.

SVG icons inside the `meta__misc` class in the meta section have a stroke color set to the same variable (`–new-pillar-colour` or `–darkModeFeature`).

The alerts label in the meta section also follows the same color styling on both iOS and Android.Here’s the rewritten version in fluent, natural English:

The `.alerts__label` inside the furniture wrapper for the meta section should have a text color of `#dcdcdc`. This applies to Android devices in standard and comment article containers.

For both iOS and Android devices, any `span[data-icon]` inside the meta section of the furniture wrapper should use the color defined by the CSS variable `–new-pillar-colour`, or fall back to `–darkModeFeature`. This applies to feature, standard, and comment article containers.

The same color rule also applies to the `:before` pseudo-element of those `span[data-icon]` elements.

On screens wider than 71.25em (1140px), for both iOS and Android devices, the meta section inside the furniture wrapper should be displayed as a block element with a top border of 1px solid. The border color should use the CSS variable `–new-pillar-colour`, or fall back to `–headerBorderColor`. This applies to feature, standard, and comment article containers.

Additionally, the `.meta__misc` class inside the meta section should also follow the same display and border rules on wider screens.On Android devices, the `.meta__misc` section inside the furniture wrapper for feature, standard, and comment article containers, as well as the `.meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc` sections, should have no margin except a 20px left margin.

On both iOS and Android, paragraphs and unordered lists within the article body of feature, standard, and comment article containers should have a maximum width of 620px.

For quoted blockquotes in the prose section of the article body on both iOS and Android, the color should be set to the secondary pillar variable.

Links in the prose section of the article body on both iOS and Android should use the primary pillar color, have no background image, be underlined with a 6px offset, and use a light gray underline color (`#dcdcdc`). When hovered over, the underline color should change to the secondary pillar variable.

In dark mode (when the user’s system prefers a dark color scheme), quoted blockquotes should use the dark mode pillar color. Links should also use the dark mode pillar color, and when hovered over, the underline color should remain the dark mode pillar color.When her son Hugo didn’t answer his phone on the morning of July 12, 2005, Isabel Miranda de Wallace didn’t hesitate. Everyone knew kidnappings were common in Mexico City, so she quickly got her brother and nephew to help search. They walked the streets near where Hugo was last seen until they found his SUV. A passerby told them they had seen someone being forced out of the car and into a nearby apartment, Wallace later said. She also mentioned talking to a boy who heard gunshots and saw an injured man being led out of the apartment around 4 a.m. “Within 24 hours, we found his car, then the building where they took my son. We had the case practically solved,” Wallace later said. “But the police didn’t believe us.”

At that time, many kidnappings went unreported because families didn’t trust the police. Those who did report often struggled to get them to take their complaints seriously. But Wallace was different. She was a successful businesswoman who had started an advertising agency that owned and operated billboards across Mexico City. “She didn’t beg or say please,” said Federico Döring, a politician and early supporter of Wallace. “She would point her finger at public officials not doing their job – and this was unheard of,” Döring told me. “In Mexico, a lot of people are often afraid to speak up because you don’t know if a politician is in bed with the cartels. That intimidates them, but it didn’t intimidate her.”

At 35, Hugo was a fast-living rich kid who loved motorbikes, American football, and chasing women. He was Wallace’s first son and used to getting his way, his ex-girlfriend Vanessa Bárcenas told police. In the years before his disappearance, he had drifted away from old friends and seemed to be using drugs, Claudia Muñoz, another of Hugo’s former girlfriends, told me. Hugo had other problems too. He told Bárcenas that some suppliers for a clothing business he owned had ties to “something like drug trafficking,” which caused trouble with the police and made him a target for kidnappers. According to Bárcenas and Muñoz, after a run-in with gang members, Hugo started driving an armored SUV and installed cameras at his home in a gated complex.

When the police investigation into Hugo’s disappearance stalled, Wallace took over the case herself. With remarkable speed, she got Hugo’s phone records and the names of people he spoke to in the hours before he vanished. It’s not unusual for families to conduct their own investigations in Mexico, but Wallace’s family took it to new levels, hiring private detectives and watching targets around the clock. Yet no breakthrough came. None of the residents in the apartment building where Hugo was allegedly taken reported hearing any disturbance. The witnesses Wallace and her family mentioned in their testimony were never found.

From the start, Wallace insisted thatThe case was being investigated as a kidnapping linked to organized crime. But without solid evidence, it seemed Hugo’s disappearance would be downgraded from a federal crime to a state-level investigation—something Wallace feared would lead nowhere. In interviews, she presented herself as a simple mother trying to navigate a confusing system. The pain of a woman searching for her missing son struck a chord with the public, and Wallace used her popularity to gain support from institutions.

Through her connections, she pushed to keep the case open. Marta Sahagún, the wife of President Vicente Fox, wrote to prosecutors asking them to support the investigation. Döring set up meetings with the head of the federal police and later with the senior prosecutor in charge of kidnapping cases. “I was really struck by how she just walked into the prosecutor’s office like it was her own home and started giving orders,” her ex-husband, Carlos León, later said.

Wallace became a hero to a nation frustrated by rising crime, police incompetence, and widespread corruption. She channeled that anger by publicizing her fearless hunt for the suspects, who she said represented the moral decay of Mexican society. “She was almost like a Batman figure,” said Ricardo Raphael, a journalist who interviewed Wallace and has written extensively about the case. Wallace’s message was clear: she would stop at nothing to bring her son’s kidnappers to justice.

On January 10, 2006, police made their first arrest in connection with Hugo’s disappearance—and Wallace was right there with them. The suspect, Juana Hilda González, was a 30-year-old professional dancer who lived in the apartment where Wallace believed her son had been kidnapped. Although González denied any involvement and provided an alibi, police were able to hold her for up to 40 days without charges, thanks to arraigo, an emergency legal measure that gives police expanded powers in organized crime cases (though in practice, this limit is often exceeded). “If you’re charged with organized crime, you lose all your procedural rights,” defense lawyer Salvador Leyva told me.

For Hugo’s kidnapping to be treated as a federal case, investigators had to prove the suspects were part of an organized crime group that had committed multiple offenses. In the weeks and months after González’s arrest, Wallace put up billboards across the city, featuring photos and full names of suspects and offering rewards of up to 250,000 pesos (about £12,000 at the time)—more than double the average annual salary in Mexico then—for information on their whereabouts. One billboard showed a photo of González’s boyfriend, Cesar Freyre, with the words: “Kidnapper. If you were a victim of this criminal, report him!” In a documentary later made about the case, Wallace herself said: “No one had ever dared to publicly accuse a kidnapper before—let alone use their full name. Neither the Mexican public nor the press could have imagined it.”

It wasn’t long before Freyre was caught. In late January 2006, news cameras arrived on a dark street in Mexico City, where police had apparently just arrested him. Wallace told reporters that she and her brother had located, followed, and subdued Freyre, managing to get a passing police patrol to arrest him just before he could draw his gun and shoot them. Leading national newspapers called Wallace “Madre Coraje” (Mother Courage). One veteran TV host called her a “lioness.” Mexico City’s then secretary for public security said she should receive a prize for her bravery. Wallace retold the story of Freyre’s capture on countless talk shows.

Just like González, Freyre denied all charges. Then, on February 8, 2006, something happened.An unexpected turn of events. González confessed and named five others, including Freyre and a woman named Brenda Quevedo, as part of the plot. She said it was a kidnapping that went wrong. She had lured Hugo to her apartment under the pretense of a date, but a struggle broke out and he died. The would-be kidnappers took photos of his body, hoping to demand a ransom. Then, sometime after 3 a.m., they cut up the body with an electric saw in her bathroom and got rid of the remains.

After the confession, the case moved quickly. Police returned to González’s apartment, seven months after the first search had found nothing. This time, they found evidence that seemed to support the prosecution’s case: an expired driver’s license belonging to Hugo and a single drop of blood that matched samples from Wallace and her husband.

Even though they hadn’t found his body, investigators concluded that Hugo had died in the apartment. Wallace put up new billboards across the city showing the suspects’ faces, publicly calling them kidnappers and murderers. Within a few weeks, two more suspects were arrested. Several relatives of the suspects were also taken into custody under the arraigo system and later accused of being part of the alleged kidnapping gang. Some of them stayed in jail for years.

Wallace had achieved something most relatives of victims could only dream of. She didn’t care much about being polite: she bragged about slipping money to anyone who might have information, including police officers. As for the billboards, they were almost certainly illegal—defamatory and violating the presumption of innocence. But few seemed to mind. “The press saw this as incredible bravery on [Wallace’s] part, to accuse kidnappers so publicly,” said Ambar Treviño, the defense lawyer for several of the accused. In a flattering profile in Reforma, a major Mexican daily newspaper, Wallace portrayed herself as a vengeful vigilante: “If I have to become a killer to find my son,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

At the time of Hugo’s disappearance, Brenda Quevedo was visiting her family in Mexico City. She was in her early 20s and home for what was supposed to be just a few months before returning to London, where she had a job lined up as a PR manager at a consulting company. During those months, she met Jacobo Tagle, a handsome car dealer who happened to be friends with Hugo. She and Tagle soon became a couple.

In 2005, just a few weeks after they met, Quevedo joined Tagle and a group of friends, including González and Freyre, as well as two brothers, Tony and Albert Castillo, for a day trip. They drove a few hours outside the capital to Chalma, a popular Catholic shrine, to honor Freyre’s brother, who had died the previous year. They posed for a photo in front of the church, smiling with their arms around each other. Prosecutors later came to believe that almost everyone in the photo was involved in Hugo’s disappearance. (The only one who wasn’t a suspect was a young child.)

View image in fullscreen: Juana Hilda González (center, in white), César Freyre (in black, sunglasses), Jacobo Tagle (in black), and Brenda Quevedo (right, in white), Tony Castillo (front), Albert Castillo (far left). Prosecutors came to believe everyone except the child was involved in the kidnapping.

A year after the photo was taken, on February 26, 2006, Quevedo was visiting family with Tagle a short drive from Mexico City when her aunt called, sounding upset. “Come quickly, and come alone. Don’t bring Jacobo,” her aunt told her. Quevedo was shocked to learn that her mother and teenage brother had returned home to find dozens of armed federal police searching every inch of the family home and asking where she was.

Hugo’s case was becoming a public story, but Quevedo said she had heard nothing about her boyfriend’s friends being arrested. When she learned that police were looking for them, her first thought was that Tagle was involved in something.Something bad happened. She called him, demanding answers. He said it was possible that one of the cars he had sold might have been stolen. Quevedo wanted to go to the police station together to sort things out, but he refused. She left town right away and went to stay with an aunt in Guadalajara, a six-hour drive away.

Through a lawyer, she learned more about the investigation. She barely knew Tagle’s friends. Now they were involved in the disappearance of his friend Hugo, and so was she. Some of the group—including González and Freyre—were already in custody. Soon, Albert Castillo was arrested and allegedly beaten and tortured to force a confession. His brother Tony was next and claimed similar abuse. By April 2006, the only suspects who hadn’t been arrested yet were Tagle and Quevedo herself.

From her aunt’s house, she watched in horror as Wallace appeared on the news day after day, accusing Tagle and others of killing Hugo. When Quevedo saw her own face on a giant billboard on the news, with the words “kidnapper” and “killer,” she crawled under the bed and sobbed, she told me.

With so much publicity, Quevedo realized she wasn’t safe in Mexico. She took scissors to her waist-length hair and started cutting. With each snip, she felt like she was leaving a part of herself behind. She got a fake ID and took a new name: Nadia, from “nadie,” meaning no one. With $200 in cash, some baggy clothes, a Bible, and a phone with only one number saved—that of distant relatives in Kentucky—she headed north. From a cramped safe house on the US border, she and a dozen others were led across the rushing waters of the Rio Grande by smugglers. From there, they crossed the desert on foot and in pickup trucks.

After a month, Quevedo reached the suburban sprawl of Louisville, Kentucky. It was too risky to speak directly to her parents or brother, but she got news through her extended family. When no one was around, she would go online to read about the Wallace case, as it was known. In her absence, she had become a source of morbid fascination for the press. In a book full of errors about the case, for which Wallace wrote the foreword, a journalist described Quevedo’s physical appearance in vivid, lingering detail, painting her as a femme fatale. Later coverage used a photo of Quevedo at a Halloween party to suggest, implausibly, that she dressed as a bunny rabbit to sell drugs. “They claimed I was someone who made it her business to seduce men and lure them into a trap,” Quevedo said.

View image in fullscreen: Workers put up a billboard in Mexico City in March 2006 showing Brenda Quevedo and Jacobo Tagle and accusing them of being ‘kidnappers’ and ‘killers.’ Photograph: Eduardo Verdugo/AP

In Louisville, Quevedo found work as a waitress at a Cuban restaurant. She told no one about what she was running from. One day at work, she met a customer named Fernando López, who was in the US military. He later came back to the restaurant with flowers, and soon after, they started dating. A year later, López took her on a hot air balloon ride. As they rose above the clouds, López reached into his pocket for the ring and placed it on the finger of the woman he knew as Nadia.

For a brief moment, it seemed like Quevedo might be able to start over. “I checked the news, waiting for the day when they would announce that the real culprits had been caught. I thought it would all be over,” Quevedo said. “But it never happened.”

In the years after Hugo’s disappearance, Wallace became a regular on the nightly news. For the media, the story of a humble mother turned determined investigator was irresistible. In 2006, the New York Times ran a piece about her under the headline “A Mexican mother turns detective, driven by devotion to her kidnapped son.” In Mexico, where she was known as La Señora Wallace, people would stop her on the street for autographs or to wish her luck. By 2007, she had signed a deal with…I’m Ricky Martin’s publicist, and there was talk of making a film about her life.

Hugo’s body was never found, and no homicide charges were ever filed. But after González’s confession became public, mainstream media largely accepted the prosecution’s case—even though all the defendants, including González (who later withdrew her confession, claiming she had been tortured), insisted they were innocent. In April 2006, criminal proceedings began against Freyre, González, and the Castillo brothers. They were all charged with kidnapping and belonging to an organized crime group. Freyre and González were also charged with possessing weapons meant for security forces.

To most lawyers, defending the four seemed like a losing battle. But when Ámbar Treviño—then a criminal lawyer in her thirties with a short, curly bob and a dry sense of humor—looked into the prosecution’s evidence, she felt she had to take the case. She quickly realized the press wasn’t interested in the defendants’ side of the story. “Individual liberty and due process aren’t exactly the kind of story that grabs the public’s attention, especially when people are angry and dealing with crime,” she told me.

Treviño argued that the prosecution’s story had major holes. In the early months of the investigation, Wallace had focused on eyewitnesses who said they heard gunshots and saw Hugo leaving the apartment injured. After González’s confession in February 2006, the story changed. Now the prosecution claimed Hugo had died of a heart attack in the apartment, and the attackers had gotten rid of the body. The eyewitness accounts were no longer mentioned. Meanwhile, the suspects and their families said prosecutors pressured them to change their statements. Key witnesses also changed their testimony, and many later said they had been pressured too.

At the time, Mexico’s justice system gave prosecutors almost total control over evidence and how it was presented. It wasn’t unusual for judges to base their verdict almost entirely on the prosecution’s case, while many defendants said they never got a real chance to be heard. After both sides submitted evidence and witness statements were taken, the judge would deliberate in writing. And while the law said criminal proceedings should last no more than a year, in practice they often dragged on much longer.

For González, Freyre, and the Castillo brothers, it took almost four years for the judge to deliver a verdict. “If Mexico didn’t exist,” Treviño said, “Kafka would have had to invent it.”

In January 2007, a few weeks after a new government took power, Wallace—followed by TV cameras—led a group of relatives of the disappeared (victims of forced disappearances in the conflict between drug cartels and the state) to the gates of the presidential palace, demanding to meet with the president. A few days later, President Felipe Calderón met with Wallace. The meeting lasted over an hour, and Wallace later boasted that the president took notes while she spoke. Calderón ordered his attorney general to give her any help she needed to find Brenda Quevedo and Jacobo Tagle, the two suspects still on the run. Soon, their faces were on police cars across Mexico City, and international arrest warrants were issued.

From the US, Quevedo followed news of the case while trying to build a new life. In late 2007, she was still working as a waitress in Kentucky when she noticed two men in suits sitting at a table. Something seemed off—they had been there for half an hour and hadn’t ordered anything. As she started to panic, her manager called her over, his face pale. The FBI was looking for her, he said. She was…She was arrested in front of her coworkers and led away in handcuffs. Quevedo didn’t know it at the time, but Wallace was nearby. She had traveled to Kentucky for the arrest.

[View image in fullscreen: Ámbar Treviño, a lawyer who defended Freyre, González, and the Castillo brothers]

Quevedo’s fiancé, López, was at home when he got a call from the FBI saying she was in their custody. They warned him he could speak to “Nadia,” but only in English—otherwise, the agents would assume they were plotting something. López told me he knew right then that this wasn’t just an immigration issue.

Nadia started by telling him her real name. Then came everything else—the allegations, the billboards, the manhunt. López’s head was spinning. Afterward, he spoke with Enriqueta Cruz, Quevedo’s mother, who shared the evidence she had gathered about inconsistencies in the official story. “I didn’t feel betrayed because once I understood everything, I saw that she was in real danger and feared for her life,” López told me. Soon, López and Cruz met in person and formed a support group for Quevedo. López was struck by Cruz’s courage and resilience, despite the toll it took on her health and finances. “If she could have sold her skin for her daughter, she would have done it,” López said. (Quevedo and López got married while she was in prison but divorced in 2009.)

Over the next two years, Quevedo was moved between jails across the US as she fought extradition. She was the only defendant in the Wallace case with a university education and a clear understanding of her rights. She argued that she would face torture if sent back to Mexico. In 2009, she was finally extradited after the US court received assurances from the Mexican federal prosecutor’s office that her rights would be protected.

When the plane door opened at Mexico City airport on September 25, 2009, the first thing Quevedo saw was the flash of cameras. Handcuffed and wearing an orange jumpsuit, she was led across the tarmac, flanked by armed police in tactical gear. “It was like I was Chapo Guzmán,” she told me, referring to the infamous drug lord.

After processing, Quevedo was taken not to jail but to a room where she came face to face with Wallace for the first time. According to Quevedo, Wallace gestured to a seat near her and said they were going to make a deal. Wallace—who was recognized as a victim of Hugo’s kidnapping but held no official judicial role—offered Quevedo a reduced sentence if she testified against the other defendants and helped them find Tagle. Quevedo refused.

By then, Wallace had become one of Mexico’s most prominent anti-crime and victims’ rights activists, a powerful position in a society where violence had exploded since the start of the “war on drugs” in 2006. The murder rate surged by 260% between 2007 and 2010. Cartel executions, beheadings, and the discovery of mass graves were increasingly common. Through her NGO Alto al Secuestro (Stop Kidnapping), Wallace published her own statistics on kidnapping and murder rates in Mexico, which often exceeded official figures and embarrassed governors. “They were scared of her. And they hated her for it,” said Samuel González Ruiz, a former head of the prosecutor’s specialist unit against organized crime and later a personal adviser to Wallace for over 15 years. Wallace was “hard-nosed, ruthless,” González Ruiz said. She advocated directly for victims’ families, including members of the business elite. “And when Isabel spoke to the anti-kidnapping unit, you can believe they listened,” González Ruiz said.

The day after being returned to Mexico, Quevedo was taken to Santiaguito, a state prison 90 minutes outside the capital. She says that on November 27, 2009, she was taken to a room where two men in balaclavas were waiting. They blindfolded her, tied her to a chair, and then began…He struck her head, demanding to know where Hugo’s body was. According to Quevedo’s account, they suffocated her with a plastic bag. When guards interrupted them, the men left.

A year later, in October 2010, Quevedo was moved to Islas Marías, a remote prison island in the Pacific usually reserved for convicted inmates. Shortly after arriving, she was taken to an isolated building facing the sea. The next day, she said, about five masked men appeared. For hours, they used electrocution, waterboarding, and sexual abuse to force her to confess and implicate her co-defendants. They threatened her family. They knew about her mother’s recent surgery, her brother in Canada—everything. (Both federal prosecutors and Mexico’s national human rights body, the CNDH, initially dismissed Quevedo’s claims, citing a lack of evidence. But a later review showed that the CNDH had ignored its own internal psychiatric evaluation from 2011, which had already found signs of torture. Her allegations were also backed by a 2022 medical report and consistent statements from three family members. In a UN working group report, the Mexican government did not dispute the torture allegations against Quevedo.)

Quevedo was kept in isolation, unable to contact her family, and denied medical care. After a week, she managed to pass a note and a phone number to another inmate. Hundreds of miles away in Mexico City, Brenda’s parents learned that their daughter was on an island prison where she had been tortured.

In the years since federal agents raided her home, Cruz had rebuilt her life to support her daughter and help her son get asylum outside Mexico. Soft-spoken, with years of struggle etched on her face, Cruz sold the family apartment and moved in with relatives in 2008 to cover the growing legal costs of fighting her daughter’s extradition. (Cruz and Brenda’s father are separated.) Brenda’s brother fled to Canada after being attacked by men who said they were hired to find his sister. “We were outcasts. Even being related to the accused condemned you,” Cruz told me.

[Image: Enriqueta Cruz, Brenda Quevedo’s mother, at home in 2026. Photograph: Luis Antonio Rojas/The Guardian]

When she got the news from her daughter, Cruz was inconsolable. It came shortly after a court hearing where Cruz had questioned the story about Hugo’s disappearance and pointed to evidence that he himself had been in trouble with the police. Cruz was sure the torture was meant as punishment. “It was clearly revenge,” she told me.

Still, Cruz kept filing complaints with the prosecutor’s office and the CNDH—which was supposed to investigate torture claims—but most were dismissed. At the same time, she started looking further, to international human rights organizations outside Mexico, beyond Wallace’s influence.

“I cried every time a complaint was dismissed,” Cruz said. “Then, when I was done, I asked myself: What can I try next? What haven’t I done yet?”

On December 24, 2009, the verdict in the trial of González, Freyre, and the Castillo brothers was finally delivered. All four were found guilty of aggravated kidnapping and organized crime. Their sentences ranged from 28 to 47 years. In Wallace’s view, this was too lenient. Over the next few months, she met with members of the Supreme Court and held an event calling for the death penalty for kidnappers. The sentences were eventually set by a federal appellate court at 78 years for González, 131 years for Freyre, and 93 years for the Castillo brothers.

In late 2010, the final suspect, Jacobo Tagle, was arrested in a satellite city on the outskirts of Mexico City. He had been living under a false identity for years, disguising himself with false teeth and wigs. After his arrest, Wallace called a press conference.Armed police paraded Tagle in front of the media. “Now I’d like to invite the press, who have always been so supportive, to note that Jacobo has not been beaten. Because it’s common for people, once they’re before a judge, to later claim they were tortured,” said Wallace, as she directed the police to lift his shirt for the cameras. Then she spoke directly to the suspect. “Jacobo, I’m now going to ask you to confirm what you said yesterday about the role of all the accused—Brenda Quevedo Cruz, Cesar Freyre Morales, the Castillo brothers, Juana Hilda [González], and you—in the kidnapping of my son.” Tagle, with greasy hair, a vacant look, and a barely audible voice, agreed.

Less than two weeks later, President Calderón awarded Wallace Mexico’s top human rights prize. “Her story is one of pride, courage, and dignity, and it serves as an example to all of us,” he said.

Wallace was now firmly at the center of national security policy. She met with Supreme Court judges, attended meetings usually reserved for top officials, and helped allies get elected to oversee the CNDH. Wallace also had a say in legislation. She became an increasingly useful voice of support for the government. In 2011, when protesters demanded the resignation of Calderón’s security chief, Genaro García Luna, Wallace publicly defended his record. The following year, Calderón’s party chose Wallace as its candidate for governor of the Mexico City region, one of the most important jobs in the country.

View image in fullscreen: President Felipe Calderón presents Wallace with Mexico’s national human rights award in 2010. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/AP

Her entry into electoral politics brought Wallace her first real taste of press scrutiny. During the campaign, it was revealed that she had been arrested in July 1998 after a violent dispute with officials who were trying to remove three of her company’s billboards, which had been deemed unsafe. Wallace, helped by a man matching Hugo’s description, reportedly cut the cables of a hydraulic crane that was removing the billboards, before trying to flee the scene. (Wallace spent several days in jail for resisting arrest, though she was eventually acquitted.) After a rocky campaign, she finished in third place with 13% of the vote, a historic low for the party.

Although she failed to win office, Wallace kept access to allies at the highest levels of government. In 2016, at an event about miscarriages of justice, she presented Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, with a birthday cake and led the crowd in singing Mexico’s happy birthday song, Las Mañanitas.

In 2010, five years after Hugo’s disappearance, the Wallace case was still moving through the courts. González, Freyre, and the Castillo brothers were appealing their convictions, while the case against Tagle and Quevedo was still in the investigation phase. There seemed little hope for the defendants. The few journalists, lawyers, and activists who publicly defended the accused faced a vicious backlash.

Soon after the first sentence was handed down, defense lawyer Treviño, after years of hard work, reluctantly withdrew from the case. It started with death threats, she said. Then a group of masked men with assault rifles broke into her home. Shortly after, authorities detained her. The allegations were almost laughably trivial: Treviño had submitted a medical note excusing her from a hearing due to back pain, but contrary to requirements, the note came from a doctor who had not examined her in person. At Treviño’s first hearing before a judge, the charges were dismissed.

Treviño had never been naive, but she was still shocked by what she saw as the power of Wallace and her allies in the prosecutor’s office to go after anyone who stood in their way. She had spent a total of two months in custody for not having the proper documentation.Paperwork related to a minor medical condition. “I’m the smallest grain of sand in the desert in this whole story, and this is what they did to me,” she said. “You genuinely fear what the state is capable of.”

This was exactly the kind of case that motivated David Bertet, the head of a small Canadian NGO focused on wrongful convictions. He came across the case in 2010, when he met with Wallace at a restaurant in downtown Mexico City to discuss a different matter. She was direct, though not unpleasant. But Bertet left the meeting troubled by what he saw as Wallace’s belief that she could judge guilt based on instinct. Soon after, he started hearing stories about people who had been detained or threatened after criticizing her.

Bertet decided to look into Hugo’s case himself, and almost immediately, he found inconsistencies. Bertet’s day job was teaching college philosophy, but he spent his free time drinking energy drinks and going through the case file. “It amazed me how easy it was to find things that clearly didn’t add up,” he recalled. Yet the Mexican authorities seemed uninterested in re-examining the Wallace case. “There was one version of events, and it couldn’t be challenged,” Bertet said.

For several years, progress was slow. Then, in 2014, as Bertet and a colleague were going through Hugo’s documents, they realized the missing man had multiple identities and several birth certificates, issued years apart and listing different fathers. Bertet knew that DNA from a drop of blood found in the apartment had been key to the investigation. It had placed Hugo at the apartment on the night he disappeared. But if Hugo’s parentage was in question, Bertet realized, so was the DNA evidence that supported the prosecution’s case. “It was exciting,” Bertet recalled. “And at the same time, it was like, damn, it’s actually true.” Now he had to decide how to use it—and anticipate Wallace’s response.

As a child, Quevedo’s hero was her father. A strong-willed lawyer who loves to debate, he would push her to express herself clearly and know her rights. He encouraged her to be independent and adventurous. Her mother, who worked as an administrative assistant at a bank, was a quieter presence. With his legal background, Quevedo’s father, Roberto, initially led the efforts to organize his daughter’s defense. But, especially after his health declined, it was Enriqueta Cruz who became her daughter’s most relentless champion.

In June 2019, Cruz arrived at the public defender’s office in Mexico City, which had just opened a new unit to address the widespread use of torture in criminal investigations. There she met Salvador Leyva, a 28-year-old public defender. He was a teenager when Hugo disappeared, and like many of his peers, he had grown up seeing Wallace as a national hero. But when he met Cruz, he was struck by her humility and the obvious toll the case had taken on her. “She wasn’t asking for anything; she just wanted someone to listen,” Leyva recalled. In the weeks that followed, he traveled to prisons across the country, interviewing the four people who had been convicted, as well as Tagle and Quevedo. He carefully reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence. Later, he spoke to Bertet, who pointed him to the doubts about Hugo’s paternity.

To Leyva, one of the things about the prosecution’s case that didn’t add up was the discovery of Hugo’s DNA in the apartment where he was supposedly murdered. In a combative 2018 television interview, Wallace had insisted that her second husband, José Enrique del Socorro Wallace, was Hugo’s father. Watching from his home, Wallace’s first husband, Carlos León, was outraged. He contacted journalists to insist that Hugo was his son, casting doubt on the key forensic evidence in the case: a single drop of blood found at the crime scene, which matched both Wallace and José Enrique.

View image in fullscreen
Wallace attends a meeting dDuring her campaign for governor of the Mexico City region in 2012. Photograph: Clasos/LatinContent/Getty Images

In October 2019, DNA tests confirmed that Wallace’s first husband had been telling the truth. Hugo really was his son. But if that was the case, why did a blood sample found at the crime scene match her second husband instead of her first? In the early days of the investigation, León told a judge in May 2021 that Wallace had convinced him to give a DNA sample. But when she handed it over to prosecutors, she told them it came from José Enrique, not León. By doing this, Wallace made sure that any DNA tests on Hugo would match her and the man she claimed was his father—her second husband. For Bertet, this small, unnecessary lie showed arrogance on Wallace’s part, and it would eventually undermine the entire case. “She was too confident and believed it would never come to light,” he suggested. “Or that if it did, no one would care.”

Then, in April 2021, Leyva discovered that the apartment where Hugo was supposedly killed had not been secured by police for the seven months between the first and second search. What’s more, it had been rented out in the meantime to a new tenant—a man who happened to work for Wallace and later married into her extended family.

From the start of the case, the accused and their families had maintained their innocence. A few persistent journalists, like Anabel Hernández and Guadalupe Lizárraga, had argued that the case against the defendants was fabricated. But now there was strong witness testimony from Wallace’s ex-husband, saying she had tampered with evidence, and solid circumstantial evidence suggesting that key physical evidence could have been planted.

In July 2021, Leyva filed a criminal complaint against Wallace, accusing her of lying under oath and fabricating evidence. He alleged that she had rented the apartment to plant the blood sample and later falsified the DNA submission to make it match. This followed an earlier complaint from his office naming those responsible for torturing Quevedo: more than a dozen officials—and Wallace, for allegedly ordering it. For the first time, Wallace’s role in the case was being investigated.

Wallace still had considerable power. And she was far from the only person whose reputation was tied to the theory that Hugo had been kidnapped. A whole group of career prosecutors and politicians had supported her cause for years. That began to change in 2020, after a UN group that works on cases of arbitrary detention called for Quevedo’s immediate release, citing allegations of coercion and failure to investigate claims of torture. “That completely changed how the media treated the case,” Leyva said. “Media that had never talked about this case from the victim’s perspective started doing so.”

In 2022, Mexico’s Supreme Court took up an appeal against the conviction of González, who was now 16 years into her 78-year sentence. Her lawyers argued that her confession had been obtained through torture. Wallace struck back by accusing the then president of Mexico’s Supreme Court, Arturo Zaldívar, of accepting bribes to review González’s case. Zaldívar told reporters: “If she is capable of falsifying evidence and making complaints against the president of a court, what wouldn’t she have done to defenseless people when she had total power and enjoyed the protection of [former presidents] Fox, Calderón, and [former security chief] García Luna?” (Neither Calderón nor Fox responded to requests for comment for this article.)

Wallace’s political influence was fading. After the election of left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018, she no longer had the same close ties to the presidency. Meanwhile, the powerful figures Wallace had allied herself with were now in trouble. In 2023, García Luna was convicted by a US court ofHe was working with the Sinaloa cartel. García Luna had been in charge of the federal police force that started the investigation into Hugo’s kidnapping, and later oversaw the prosecutors who built the case, as well as the federal prison system where Quevedo and her co-defendants were allegedly tortured.

As more details slowly came to light, many Mexicans began to see Wallace not as someone criticizing a corrupt system, but as a symbol of its worst abuses. In October 2022, on Wallace’s orders, billboards appeared across Mexico City displaying confessions from some of the accused—even though there was strong evidence the statements were made under torture. A judge quickly ruled the billboards illegal and ordered them taken down.

A few weeks later, in another attempt to control the story, Wallace opened a pop-up museum in Mexico City called the “Wallace case.” Using mannequins and stage sets, the exhibit recreated key scenes from the prosecution’s case, including Hugo’s death itself. In one room, a video of Tagle from a police reconstruction played in the background. On screen, Tagle—who had retracted his confession soon after—explained how they dismembered the body. Nearby, a blindfolded and bound mannequin representing Hugo in his final moments lay on a mattress. “You will see for yourselves how the narrative told by those responsible for this crime is false,” Wallace said of the exhibit. “They were never tortured or coerced in any way, nor were any of their rights violated. In fact, they confessed spontaneously.”

About 16 years after first being hailed as a hero by the media, Wallace’s promotional efforts were mostly ignored. At the exhibition, a text message from Hugo to his mother on the night he disappeared was displayed on a wall. “I’m going into the cinema, Mum,” it read. “I’ll call you when I get out.” The message was followed by a string of emojis. But no such message had ever been submitted as evidence, and more strikingly, those emojis didn’t exist in 2005, when the message was supposedly sent.

When the Supreme Court’s ruling finally came, it was harsh. On June 11, 2025, it ordered Juana Hilda González’s immediate release after nearly 20 years in prison, ruling that her confession was obtained through torture and that “there is not a single piece of evidence directly linking Juana Hilda to [Hugo’s] disappearance.” The court added that because González had been portrayed as a bad mother and an ambitious woman, she received a harsher sentence, and this gender stereotyping was an additional violation of her rights. The court also threw out all evidence derived from her coerced confession, including the controversial second search of the apartment that found the blood sample and Hugo’s expired driver’s license.

Yet the Supreme Court’s decision did not lead to the immediate release of the five other people implicated in Hugo’s disappearance, even though they were partly convicted based on González’s coerced confession. The ruling only opened the door for their cases to be reviewed. In the meantime, they remain in detention.

Wallace did not live to see the case she built fall apart. Three months before the ruling, she died from complications after surgery. Her funeral was private, and little is known about the circumstances of her death.

Many of Wallace’s former allies and supporters see her as the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt. After her death, one of the country’s leading broadcasters condemned what he called the left’s “perverse vilification” of Wallace. Calderón and many senators and political heavyweights offered their condolences. Samuel González Ruiz, her former adviser, claimed Wall…Ace was targeted in retaliation for exposing corruption and for her aggressive, sometimes misguided campaigning in several complex, politicized cases. “Those cases made them furious, and that’s why they made up these accusations against Isabel Wallace,” he told me.

While most of Wallace’s supporters reject claims that she fabricated evidence, some admit she sometimes broke the law. “Isabel did things that, honestly, don’t align with human rights—because in her desperation, she had to do what the government wasn’t doing,” said Döring, a conservative politician and ally. “She lost faith in the government, she lost faith in justice. And she took justice into her own hands.”

Wallace always firmly denied the allegations against her. She refused to answer questions about Hugo’s parentage, calling it a personal matter. The organization she founded, Alto al Secuestro, now led by her family’s lawyer, declined my requests to answer questions about Wallace or her work. “Neither the family, her former employees, nor anyone from the NGO is interested in giving interviews,” it said. Mexico’s prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Even after her death, Wallace continued to push her story. In a letter published posthumously, she predicted the Supreme Court would rule against her, saying it was part of a conspiracy. “I know that sooner or later, those trying to free my son’s kidnappers will get their way,” she warned.

More than 20 years after Hugo disappeared, his body still hasn’t been found. But from the early days of the investigation, Treviño insisted there were signs that Wallace’s story about Hugo didn’t add up. Nine days after he vanished, his bank card was used several times: to pay for a seafood meal, for a purchase at a department store, and for a paintball game. A few months later, another of his cards was used to pay for a dating site. In May 2006, one of his friends and her partner went to the police to report that Hugo had contacted them multiple times and even met them in person after his disappearance. They later claimed prosecutors ignored their statements.

Police efforts to trace calls made from Hugo’s multiple phones after his death also turned up intriguing results. After being contacted by investigators, one recipient of these calls pointed police to a strange voicemail they had received from an unknown number around 3 a.m., three months after Hugo’s disappearance. The caller, whom several listeners identified as Hugo, said: “I’m sick of this shit, man. Yeah, I know I messed up, but honestly? I don’t give a damn. I’m out here drinking, man—look at me. Whatever. You know what? You know who screwed me over?” But these oddities were overlooked by the media and the legal system.

Last year, at the request of some defendants, Claudia Muñoz, one of Hugo’s former partners and the mother of his child, gave a deposition at a consulate in the US. She spoke about a phone call she received almost two years after Hugo is believed to have died. “When he called, I couldn’t believe it was him. But then I recognized his voice,” Muñoz told me.

[Image: Brenda Quevedo under house arrest on the outskirts of Mexico City in July 2026. Photograph: Luis Antonio Rojas/The Guardian]

[Image: Quevedo and Cruz at home. Photograph: Luis Antonio Rojas/The Guardian]

[Image: Quevedo’s ankle monitor. Photograph: Luis Antonio Rojas/The Guardian]

She said Hugo called asking about their daughter. “He told me he was going through something very serious. But he wanted to see our girl,” Muñoz said. Muñoz told him he needed to sort out his problems first. The call ended abruptly. After they spoke, Muñoz said she contacted Wallace. “As soon as I said I had spoken to Hugo, she became angry and told me…””It couldn’t be true,” she recalled. Muñoz said Mexican prosecutors ignored her requests to give evidence at the trial of the accused.

What happened to Hugo remains a mystery. His concerns about security and a 2001 conviction for smuggling suggest he may have been involved in criminal activity. It’s possible, as journalist Ricardo Raphael has suggested, that Hugo owed money to dangerous people and his mother helped him “disappear.” According to this theory, to cover up one crime, Wallace invented a second one out of thin air. For now, though, this is just speculation.

For Leyva, the point is that this story is about much more than Wallace herself. “She wouldn’t have been able to do anything if there wasn’t someone in the government, the judiciary, the prosecutor’s office, or in politics allowing it,” he said. Mexico’s human rights commission has now concluded that there was evidence to support claims that all six defendants were tortured with the aim of forcing them to incriminate themselves and each other.

After 19 years in prison, González is now free and trying to rebuild her life. (She declined to speak for this article.) But her three co-defendants remain in prison, waiting for their own separate appeals. Meanwhile, Tagle and Quevedo are still awaiting trial for their alleged role in Hugo’s kidnapping. Their cases are unusual in how long they’ve lasted, but not in their basic structure. This year, almost half of all detainees in Mexican prisons had no sentence and were being held under a system of mandatory pre-trial detention. Two international court rulings have declared this system incompatible with human rights law.

They are not the only ones affected. Many family members of the accused were targeted by prosecutors based on weak evidence, as were their lawyers. Leyva himself was often targeted by Wallace, who filed multiple procedural complaints against him and, in 2020, suggested he was involved in an alleged kidnapping attempt against her lawyer. In 2022, the UN criticized the use of “criminal investigations and acts of intimidation” against Leyva and several colleagues after their work on Quevedo’s case. Leyva now lives in Ireland and doesn’t plan to return to Mexico. “I would definitely have been better off without this case,” he told me. “Still, I don’t regret it.”

In 2024, after almost 18 years in jail, thanks to a petition her defense had filed years earlier, Quevedo was released and placed under house arrest. She lives in a small house with her mother on the hilly outskirts of Mexico City. Her case is still stuck in the investigation phase, held up by technical legal disputes. “How can it be possible for the system to be this slow?” Quevedo said when we spoke recently. “Almost 20 years waiting for a resolution. It’s unbelievable.”

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Quevedo returned to a world that felt foreign – technology she couldn’t understand, cousins she had last seen as children now with their own families. She was 25 when she was first labeled a murderer on a billboard. She is now 45, and worries she may never get the chance to get married, have children, or pursue a career.

Outside her house, the endless urban sprawl stretches out like a muddy blur beyond the horizon, but Quevedo is confined to a few dozen square meters. Just out of sight, a police car sits on the street. “It’s another form of imprisonment, just a more comfortable one,” Quevedo told me. She has to wear an ankle monitor at all times.

Last month, a new group of lawyers took on Quevedo’s case, calling for the judge to finally rule and acquit her. She is grateful for the growing support after so many years of struggle. “Nobody believed us, nobody helped us, nobody wanted to know or even talk about the case. Whoever tried – it went terribly for them.” But for more than 20 years, her mother never gave up.She stopped trying to speak up for her daughter. “The one who was out there fighting the hardest,” Quevedo said, “was my mom.”

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Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the phrase She was almost like a Batman figure Mexicos fearless Mother Courage based on the likely context of a real person fighting crime or corruption

BeginnerLevel Questions

1 What does she was almost like a Batman figure mean
It means she operated outside the law like a vigilante She took justice into her own hands because she didnt trust the police or government to do it

2 Who is Mexicos fearless Mother Courage
This usually refers to a reallife Mexican woman often an activist or community leader who bravely fights against drug cartels corruption or violence The nickname Mother Courage comes from a famous play about a woman who survives war by being tough and resourceful

3 Is she actually a superhero like Batman
No Its a comparison Like Batman she works in the shadows fights powerful enemies and the authorities might not approve But shes a real person not a fictional character

4 Why is she called Mother Courage
The term Mother Courage describes a woman who is fiercely protective resilient and willing to sacrifice everything to survive and help her community even in dangerous situations

5 Did she wear a costume or mask
Probably not a full Batman costume She might wear a mask or disguise to hide her identity from cartels but the comparison is about her actions and mindset not her outfit

AdvancedLevel Questions

6 What specific actions did she take that were Batmanlike
She likely conducted her own investigations gathered evidence and publicly shamed or physically confronted criminals when the police wouldnt act She might have used social media or local networks to warn others similar to Batmans signal

7 How is this different from a typical vigilante in other countries
In Mexico vigilantes often form armed community groups because the state is weak or corrupt Her Batman style suggests she works alone or in a small secretive cell relying on intelligence rather than a large militia

8 What are the main risks she faces
She risks being killed or kidnapped by cartels She also risks arrest by the police for taking the law into her own hands Her family is often in danger too