On November 7, 2003, Julieta Ávila boarded a bus in Tuxtla Gutiérrez bound for San Cristóbal de las Casas.

It was a trip she had made dozens of times, a route of barely two hours along Federal Highway 190.

But Julieta never arrived at her destination.

For nine years, her family lived with the anguish of not knowing what had happened to her, until in 2012 a casual photograph taken by a tourist at a craft market would change everything they thought they knew about her disappearance.

What that image would reveal not only explained where Julieta had been for almost a decade, but also uncovered a truth so disturbing that it would challenge everything we thought we knew about the human capacity to reinvent oneself when life becomes unbearable.

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Now let’s discover how it all began.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, located in the Highlands of Chiapas, is a colonial city that in 2003 was already beginning to establish itself as an international tourist destination.

Surrounded by indigenous, Zozil, and Celt communities, the city maintained a delicate balance between the modernity brought by foreign visitors and the ancient traditions of its native inhabitants.

Julieta Ávila Pacheco was 34 years old when she disappeared.

Born in Comitán de Domínguez, she had studied social work at the Autonomous University of Chiapas and for the past six years had worked for a non-governmental organization dedicated to teaching literacy to indigenous women in rural communities.

Her work required her to travel constantly between Tuxtla Gutiérrez, where she lived, and San Cristóbal, where the NGO’s main office was located.

Those who knew Julieta described her as a strong-willed but reserved woman.

She was about 5’5″ tall.

She had dark brown hair that she always wore in a ponytail and honey-colored eyes that lit up when she talked about her work with the communities.

She lived alone in a small apartment in the El Retiro neighborhood of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

And although she had had a few romantic relationships, none had lasted long enough to start a family.

Her older sister, Esperanza Ávila, 38, worked as a teacher at a primary school in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and knew Julieta’s emotional ups and downs best.

“My sister was very committed to her work,” she would recall years later.

“Hope, but she also carried a sadness that I never quite understood.

Sometimes I saw her lost in thought, as if something were consuming her from the inside.

” Their mother, Remedios Pacheco, a widow for 10 years, lived in the family home in Comitán with her younger brother, Esteban, 28, who worked as a mechanic at a local shop.

The family was close-knit but respected individual boundaries, something that would later prove crucial to understanding the events that were about to unfold.

Julieta’s work with the NGO Mujeres de los Altos (Women of the Highlands) was not easy.

It required venturing into communities where distrust of outsiders was common, where gender roles were deeply ingrained, and where Spanish was frequently a second language.

However, Julieta had managed to gain the trust of many Indigenous women thanks to her patience and genuine respect for their traditions.

In November 2003, Mexico was undergoing a period of political transition following the end of the PRI’s more than 70-year rule.

In Chiapas, the Zapatista movement maintained a presence in several regions, creating an atmosphere of political tension that particularly affected those working with Indigenous communities.

Although Julieta had always been careful to keep her work out of any political controversy, the very nature of her work placed her in a delicate position.

November 7, 2003, was a cold, cloudy Friday in Tuxla Gutiérrez.

Julieta had gotten up early, as usual, and had coffee and sweet bread for breakfast while reviewing some work documents.

She had an important meeting scheduled in San Cristóbal for the following Monday, but had decided to travel on Friday so she could spend the weekend reviewing materials at the Casa de la Cultura library.

At 10:30 a.

m.

, Julieta boarded the Cristóbal Colón bus at the first-class terminal in Tuxla.

She carried a brown canvas backpack containing clothes for the weekend, some work books, and a folder with documents she needed to review.

She also had her usual handbag, a black leather bag.