The Search

“What makes one person fold into despair and another walk through the countryside looking for graves?” For the first issue of Now Voyager, John Gibler tells the story of Araceli Salcedo Jiménez, whose daughter, Rubí, was abducted from a bar in Veracruz, Mexico, in 2012. Since then, Jiménez has coordinated search parties that have surfaced the remains of dozens of Mexico’s disappeared—but never those of her daughter. Gibler folds years of reporting into a story that braids Rubí’s disappearance with Jiménez’s perilous search. Now Voyager puts the reading time at 63 minutes, but I bet you’ll read it faster; I certainly did.

It seems likely that Oviedo drove Rubí to the Bulldog Bar and then left with her—whether by force or deception—some thirty or forty minutes later. It’s possible that she got involved, however tangentially and briefly, in some illicit activity with the Fernández brothers. Based on the available evidence, it’s more likely that she didn’t. It’s possible that Oviedo sought to punish Rubí for asking for his help to release the young men in police custody in Río Blanco, or for saying that Uriel was her cousin, when in fact he was her ex-boyfriend’s brother. It’s possible that he took her to Rancho Cali that night. It’s possible that the Zetas murdered and buried her then and there. It’s possible that she was trafficked somewhere else and killed later. And it is remotely, hauntingly possible that Rubí could still be alive.