GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Hundreds of relatives and mothers of missing people in Jalisco joined on Saturday a silent march to express their pain and the ordeal of the absence of their children.

The faces of the thousands of missing people were shown on blankets, banners, T-shirts and in photographs that the relatives carried with expressions of anguish on their faces in the march in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state in central Mexico.

The disappearances come amid a surge in gang violence in the state, where several powerful drug cartels are active.

The mothers and families of the missing people were accompanied in the march by members of civil society.

There were no shouts or slogans during the march. Dressed in white and some walking with arms linked, the mothers observed silence due to pain, fear and anger.

“I am not dead. I don’t sleep because I’m thinking. We have no news of our other son also, we don’t know where he is, whom is he staying with. It’s severe pain,” Maria Miramontes told EFE.

Miramontes, from Los Angeles, has received no news about her son Cesar for almost a month.