Mexican police finds 23 abducted children

Juana Perez, the mother of a two-year-old child abducted in Chiapas protested on Tuesday outside of Mexico's National Palace to demand help from the president. Local authorities in Chiapas started the search for Perez' son three weeks ago, and on Tuesday announced they arrested three women who held captive 23 stolen children.

The children were kept at a house and forced to sell trinkets in the street. They were handed over to child welfare authorities. The three women arrested may face human trafficking and forced labour charges. Perez said within none of the rescued children was her child, Dylan Esau Gomez Perez, taken from the market where she works selling fruit and vegetables.

She said her son would sometimes wander off to play, but that no children had ever been snatched from the market before. Most of the children were between two and 15 years old, but prosecutors in the southern state of Chiapas said they found three babies aged between three and 20 months at the house in the colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas. San Cristobal is a picturesque, heavily indigenous city that is popular among tourists, and it is not unusual to see children and adults hawking local crafts like carvings and embroidered cloth.