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- A vigilante mother whose daughter was kidnapped and killed by a Mexican drug cartel carried out a years-long crusade in which she hunted down 10 of her daughter's killers alone, The New York Times reported.
- Miriam Rodriguez, of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, became an activist after her daughter, Karen, 20, was abducted in 2014.
- Rodriguez disguised herself by changing her hair and playing various roles to collect names and addresses.
- On Mother's Day in 2017, weeks after she chased down her final target, Rodriguez was killed by gunmen outside her home.
- Rodriguez had set up a group of families whose relatives had gone missing. Her son, Luis, who initially left to escape San Fernando's violence, returned home to run it.
- Rodriguez is now considered a hero in her hometown and has a bronze plaque honoring her in its central square.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
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The extraordinary courage of a Mexican mother who hunted down her daughter's killers in a drug cartel killers was revealed in a New York Times investigation published Sunday.
Miriam Rodriguez, of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, became an activist and vigilante after her daughter, Karen, 20, was abducted on January 23, 2014, by the Zetas drug cartel.
Karen was in her pickup truck when armed men forced their way in and abducted her.
Her family followed the kidnappers' demands and took out a loan to pay the ransom, The Times reported. Rodriguez even met with a cartel member who offered to help find Karen for $2,000.
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But the family was duped, and Karen's remains were found at an abandoned ranch later that year.
Rodriguez dedicated the rest of her life to achieving justice for her daughter. The information she gave the police ensured that people responsible for her daughter's killing were jailed.
To track down the killers, she changed her hair and appearance, used a fake ID, and adopted many disguises. In one instance, she pretended to be a pollster to collect names and addresses. In another, she pretended to be a health worker.
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On one occasion, Rodriguez captured a cartel member while he was selling roses on the street, The Times reported. He recognized her and ran, but Rodriguez managed to catch up to him and tackle him. She held a gun to his throat and threatened to kill him if he moved.
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Rodriguez's crusade for justice ended on Mother's Day 2017, when gunmen killed her outside her home just weeks after she chased down her final target. Her husband found her body lying facedown on the street, her hand in her purse next to her pistol, The Times reported.
On Tuesday, the Mexican TV channel ForoTV tweeted an image of her with a caption that said in Spanish, "#LoMásVisto Miriam Rodríguez, the woman who chased her daughter's murderers until she caught them."
—Foro_TV (@Foro_TV) December 16, 2020
Rodriguez is hailed as a hero
In the weeks before her death, Rodriguez asked the government for armed guards, fearing she would be targeted by prisoners who had escaped from a jail in Ciudad Victoria, The Times reported.
Members of Zetas, formerly an armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, have been engaged in a brutal war with their former bosses for years, The Times said. They frequently abduct innocent people for ransom or conscript them, and sometimes they "organized death matches between captives for sport," the report said.
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San Fernando is along a route north through Tamaulipas that leads to the US, and the dirt roads and areas around it "provide a web of smuggling routes ideal for traffickers," the report said.
Authorities discovered the bodies of 72 migrants on the city's outskirts in 2010, and abductions of bus passengers the following year led to the discovery of almost 200 bodies that had been dumped in mass graves, The Times said. By 2014, "mass graves were so common that finding fewer than 20 remains at a time barely merited a headline," the report said.
The governor of Tamaulipas tweeted in May 2017 that the state government wouldn't allow Rodriguez's death "to be one more statistic."
Rodriguez had set up a group of families whose relatives had gone missing. Her son, Luis, who had left to escape San Fernando's violence, now runs it, The Times said.
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The report said Rodriguez was hailed as a hero in her hometown and has a bronze plaque honoring her in its central square.
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