To elaborate on private attorneys in Mexico vs Brazil, in Mexico you will get a COURT apported attorney from the LOCAL court that hears your case. In Brazil you get an attorney that works for the federal government and probably has as much or more experience handling Hague cases than most private attorneys. In Mexico, you can count on this attorney probably being inexperienced in general, hence the fact that he’s working as a court appointed attorney to represent essentially indigent people, and he has almost certainly never handled a Hague case. He or she will also be a local to the town the abducting parent now lives in (and probably came from) along with sharing nationality, language and culture with the abductor. In Mexico, as in all of Latin America, corruption is always a factor and when combined with the above factors that is a recipe for disaster.

If, and only if, you are also a Mexican citizen and a left behind mother, should you even CONSIDER not hiring a private attorney in Mexico. It is truly unfortunate that the OCI does not tell parents this directly, especially when even their own non-compliance reports state that judicial returns typically only occur when the LBP hires a private attorney that specializes in the Hague Convention.