Mexico's Disappeared

"What we want is to find the disappeared. And we are reinforcing the institutions of the Mexican State to better prevent and respond to this tragic crime."

"We reaffirm our commitment. We will continue searching for all missing persons until we find them."

"Our obligation is to continue looking for everyone, for every person."

"And, at the same time, to eradicate this crime. There should be no more disappeared in Mexico."

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

 

"The idea that forced disappearances don’t happen, or that most disappearances are related to voluntary absences, minimizes the responsibility of the state."

"Limiting the number of missing persons to 43,128 minimizes the magnitude of a crisis that has a human face and that won’t be solved through administrative searches."

Centro Prodh human rights group

 

"We are reverting once again to the idea that only those with case files at the public prosecutor’s office will be considered."

"There is deep mistrust of the prosecutors’ offices; there is significant collusion between these offices and criminal groups – that’s common knowledge."

Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, Mexican anthropologist 

Mothers gather outside Banorte Stadium before the Mexico v Portugal match in Monterrey on 28 March, asking for justice for their missing loved ones. Photograph: Franco Uriel Pérez Ramírez/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

 

Volunteer search teams last year discovered an abandoned ranch where inexplicably a multitude of shoes were found. To the search teams this was evidence of an extermination camp operated by a drug cartel. When charred human remains were found there as well, Mexican authorities went into denial mode, insisting that the Izaguirre ranch in Jalisco, western Mexico, was actually a training camp for new recruits of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the most powerful of Mexico's many criminal groups.

 

Dissatisfied with the outcome of the investigation, volunteers returned to the site to continue searching for answers and another disturbing discovery was revealed. There, they found a septic pit stuffed with human teeth and bone fragments. Yet another discovery consolidating the inescapable reality of an ongoing grim chapter in Mexico. Over 133,000 people have vanished across the country and Mexican authorities have gone out of their way fruitlessly to solve the situation, then resorted to minimizing it and finally denying its existence.

People hold pictures of missing persons in front of the National Palace during the commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared in Mexico City, on 30 August 2019. Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images

 

The fact that Mexicans have been struggling with, in an ongoing effort to stem the tide of the disappeared -- or at the very least comprehend how and why it is occurring -- hoping for a clue that might direct them toward prevention focuses on the reality that tens of thousands of people have disappeared in the past several decades, and the suspects causing these sudden absences in civil society are organized crime, aided and abetted by colluding government officials. 

 

President Claudia Sheinbaum has sworn to pursue justice until such time as the mystery of these wholesale disappearances has been brought to a conclusion. The rate at which the government has moved in an effort to solve the frighteningly deadly situation has been glacial and ineffective in the opinion of government critics. Societal condemnation of government has placed new pressure on the president for the urgent need of greater progress.

 

According to government statistics, homicides have dropped by 41 percent under this administration, while the number of missing persons has more than doubled since 2015. Prosecutors have been mandated by the president to open an investigation once a disappearance report has been received. A nationwide emergency alert system was launched to respond to missing person reports. Nonetheless controversy has followed these initiatives.

 

A person runs along the Sunday bike route in front of a section of the metal guardrail at the so-called “Roundabout of the Disappeared,” plastered with photographs of missing persons, in Mexico City.

(Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)

 

An audit to review the national disappearance registry was ordered in the wake of the Izaguirre ranch discovery, with a goal to ensure accurate data collection. Created in 2018, the registry merged lists from state prosecutors, search commissions and volunteers, an assimilation difficult to analyze. "There were no standards, no methodology", stated security official overseeing the effort, Marcela Figueroa. The total of 130,000 entries were divided into three groups by Ms. Figueroa's research team. Given the lack of information, argued the government, searching for one set of the missing would be impossible.

 

One third of the entries were categorized as individuals who had been reported missing, but who had been found to have married, filed taxes or received vaccinations. Of the remaining 43,600 people of whom nothing had been heard from after being reported missing, sufficient information exists to enable continued searches. This conclusion drew mixed reactions from the concerned public with some researchers claiming government failed to make its data public and as such, verifying the audit's accuracy was not possible.  

"I want to give a vote of confidence."

"The problem is they can show whatever figures they want, but if there's no evidence to back them up, it's going to be really hard to defend what they're doing." 

Fernando Escobar, researcher, Common Cause, Mexico 

Forestry workers scrape soil looking for evidence of human remains during a massive, multi-agency search through Cumbres del Ajusco National Park, which sits south of Mexico City. (Jorge Barrera/CBC)