“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
Luis Santiago Marín García, a 16-year-old teenager from Etzatlán, Jalisco, disappeared on January 3. His family fears he may have been recruited by organized crime.
Restless behavior, a trip to the store, and a farewell letter marked the beginning of the nightmare for María Gabriela García Martínez, mother of Luis Santiago Marín García, a 16-year-old from Etzatlán, Jalisco, who disappeared on January 3.
For her, the evidence points to possible recruitment by organized crime through a false job offer.
Her son was last seen around 7:40 p.m., after spending the day restless and constantly glued to his cell phone.
She explained that since the afternoon they had noticed a change in the teenager's behavior: “We noticed he was acting suspiciously, restless, going in and out, glued to his cell phone. He was like that throughout the afternoon and evening.”
A trip that raised alarms
According to her testimony, as night fell, Luis Santiago went into his room, put on a jacket, and announced that he was going to the store. However, his aunt, Fabiana Vanessa García Martínez, sensed something strange and decided to follow him:
“He goes into his room, puts on his jacket, and leaves, saying, ‘I'm going to the store.’ My sister thought he looked suspicious and followed him. He started running, and my sister tried to catch up with him, but there came a point where she couldn't see him anymore because he kept running and running, and she lost sight of him.”
Luis Santiago is in his third semester of high school and combined his studies with occasional jobs as a construction worker's assistant, mainly on weekends and during school breaks.
“In the afternoons he would go to high school, and on Saturdays he would go to work, or during vacations he would also go to work… He helped with construction work, he was an assistant.” Although he never openly expressed any problems, his mother acknowledged that she was worried about the friends her son had recently made:
“That's the only thing, really, that he was hanging out with, that he was in contact with some friends that I saw, and I didn't like their friendship.”
According to Gabriela García, these young men were neither childhood friends nor schoolmates: “I didn't know them, and he met them there... In fact, one of the boys who went with him wasn't even in school.”
Trail lost in minutes, a chronicle of the disappearance
Fabiana Vanessa, Luis Santiago's aunt, was one of the last people to see him. Her testimony reconstructs, step by step, the moment the teenager left home and disappeared in a matter of minutes.
“That day I was visiting my sister. I live a block away from her house. The boy was going in and out, and he was glued to his cell phone. I approached him, and he was responsive, he answered my questions, he ate well, but I did notice a restlessness about him.”
According to her testimony, the atmosphere in the house was normal. There were family visits, food, and goodbyes. It was during that time that Luis Santiago took advantage of a moment of inattention: “He went into his room. He was in there for less than ten minutes. I was already at the door because we were saying goodbye to my brother and sister-in-law. That's when he took advantage of the situation and slipped away.”
Minutes later, the teenager left the house.
After searching the area where he was first seen, his relatives proceeded to file a report.
“I was standing on the sidewalk and I saw him. He was wearing a red windbreaker jacket, a white baseball cap with lime green stripes and the letter M, dark navy blue, ripped jeans, and black sneakers,” she detailed.
Something immediately caught her attention: “The jacket looked very bulky to me. He turned around, or rather, he didn't even turn to look at me, he just glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and said to my mother, ‘I'm going to the store.’ It seemed very suspicious to me.”
While the mother asked a relative to accompany her to follow him, Fabiana decided to take another route so as not to lose sight of him:
“I ran in the opposite direction. From where we live, it would be two blocks down. I saw him walking with giant strides. He's about five feet eight inches tall, and I'm short, so there was a big difference in our strides.”
The aunt tried to call for help: “I called his father and said, ‘Come here, Santi is on the last street, I don't know what's wrong with him, come, I'm alone.’ I also called my sister and said, ‘Come here, something is going to happen, he's going to get away.’”
From a distance, she noticed that the young man wasn't completely alone. About three and a half blocks away, she saw another person come out: “It was kind of dark, and I didn't know him. I see the boy take something out from under his jacket and put it in his backpack.”
The moment was decisive. Fabiana remembers telling her sister, “‘Hurry, he’s going to get away.’ My dad arrived on his bicycle, and I told him, ‘He’s already at the corner, he’s the one in the red jacket.’ But by the time we got to the entrance of the town, he had disappeared.”
That was the last trace of him. They continued searching, they went to the bus terminal, they asked at the stalls if anyone had seen the young man or if he had gotten into a van, but nobody saw anything. “He was gone in seconds. After that, we didn't hear anything. We went back home and started the protocol, we went to the mayor's office, to the police station, to file a report.”
Goodbye in a letter: I don't want to cause you any more problems, I'm going to miss you
Hours after noticing his absence, the family returned home and found a letter inside the boy's closet. The contents raised even more alarms:
“If you are reading this letter, it's because I'm not here anymore, I left home and I won't be able to answer messages or calls for a while. But don't worry, I'll be fine. I'll call you when I can and also to send you money. And, well, I love you very much, I don't want to cause you any more problems and I'm going to miss you,” the note read.
The mother confirmed that the letter is now part of the investigation file.
“Yes, it's at the Prosecutor's Office, I took it to them and they made a copy of it,” she said. Despite this, she assured that there has been no significant progress. “The authorities say they are going to follow up, but I haven't seen much progress. I hope Pablo Lemus can help us to expedite this search.”
This was the letter Luis Santiago left as a farewell to his family.
For Gabriela, the possibility that her son was recruited is real.
“I do believe, then, that he was taken away to be recruited, with a false promise, because he did leave me a message saying he was going to work.” With a trembling voice, she sent a direct message to her son: “Come home, we love you very much, I miss you, I want you to be here with us, we miss you so much,” she said through tears.
Disappearance of teenagers, a constant problem
The Commission for the Search for Missing Persons published the official search notice for the teenager on Monday. This case is not isolated. In August 2025, teenagers Paul Alexander and Carlos Alejandro, both 16 years old and from Jalisco, were found dead in Culiacán, Sinaloa, after being reported missing in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos and Zapopan, respectively.
The Jalisco Attorney General's Office confirmed that both were victims of forced recruitment, contacted through social media with false job offers, a method identified as a growing trend. The young men were reportedly taken to Zacatecas for training before being transferred to Sinaloa, where they died in an armed confrontation.
According to the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection of San Pedro Tlaquepaque, by the end of 2025, 70 people were located in the vicinity of the new bus terminal, of which 26 were women and 44 men.
Of the total, 36 were minors: 15 girls and 21 boys, and 34 were adults. The operation was implemented in October 2024 and continues with a force of 44 officers and eight units, comprised of State Police, the National Defense Secretariat, the National Guard, and municipal police.
The strategy includes foot patrols, the presence of the K9 canine unit, two service modules, and 24 video surveillance cameras with permanent monitoring. In September 2025, an Uber driver prevented a 15-year-old girl from allegedly becoming a victim of organized crime after the teenager accepted a job offer with an unusually high salary through social media and requested a ride to the bus station.
During the trip, the driver noticed something was wrong, stopped the vehicle on the side of Lázaro Cárdenas and Río Seco, and requested assistance from municipal police.
This is what Luis Santiago looked like when he left his home and told his family he was going to the shop.
Data from the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons (RNPDNO) reports between 3,300 and 3,500 missing children and adolescents in the state as of the end of 2025, placing Jalisco among the states with the highest incidence nationwide. Six out of ten missing teenagers are girls, mainly between 15 and 17 years old.
The highest concentration of reports is in municipalities in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, where more than 65 per cent of cases are concentrated, especially in Guadalajara, Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Tonalá and Tlajomulco.
Meanwhile, Luis Santiago's family remains hopeful that he will be found alive and demands that his case not be added to the growing number of disappearances in Jalisco: "As a mother, as an aunt, help me with my nephew... I want you healthy, I want you safe... Please help us, please help us find him, that's all we ask."
Source: Milenio
