Mexico City, Dec 23 (EFE).- Discrepancies in the numbers of missing people and changes of officials in charge of managing the crisis of the country’s disappeared marked 2023 in Mexico and leaves the relatives of the victims with a feeling of chaos and lack of protection.
Photograph showing a poster with images of missing persons placed on December 22, 2023 in front of the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico. EFE/Isaac Esquivel
“The administration (of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) began with some promising signs with an attempt to distance itself from what we had had before, but many of those promises were shipwrecked throughout the six-year term and today leave a very bleak outlook,” Santiago Aguirre, the director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh), told EFE.
Throughout the year, people continued to disappear every day and the forensic crisis persisted with more than 52,000 unidentified bodies.
The government assured on Dec. 14 that there are only 12,377 missing people, according to its new census, and not 111,000, a figure from the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons as of Aug. 20.
This discrepancy in figures is not helpful for the families of victims nor for the organizations that accompany them, Aguirre said.
The Ministry of the Interior (Segob) is focusing on figures, and the census carried out implies, the expert said, a disdain for the tragedy of the missing persons crisis and for the relatives, especially for some of the categories, such as that for records “without sufficient data” that excludes 26,090 people.
In addition, he said, efforts should be distributed on urgent tasks such as the consolidation of the National Forensic Data Bank, “a search tool that has been provided by law since 2017 and that families have had to litigate in court for it to begin to be created, and which remains an incomplete tool.”
With this and accumulated years of struggle on the part of the families, frustration was palpable for the victims throughout the year.
In addition was the departure of the national search commissioner, Karla Quintana, and Segob’s undersecretary of human rights, Alejandro Encinas, both close to the families and with specialized careers in the matter.
“They had dialogue with the groups, and instead what we have seen is the arrival of new profiles to the public administration with very little margin (due to the June 2024 elections),” Aguirre shared.
Throughout the year, relatives of Mexico’s missing who were interviewed by EFE showed their frustration at the slowness of investigations, the forensic crisis and the lack of commitment on the part of multiple agencies.
María Herrera, mother of four children who disappeared, and recently recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2023, told EFE in May that “the only thing” many mothers seek is a decent burial for their children, and they can’t even have that.
María del Carmen Volante, mother of Pamela Gallardo, a young woman who disappeared five years ago in the south of Mexico City, went to a field search on May 26, a day that revealed the lack of commitment and means on the part of the authorities.
Members of the National Guard, search dogs and firefighters were not in attendance, even though the Search Commission had assured that they would be there.
Furthermore, when beginning the work in the field she realized that the pre-search work had not been carried out either. The search areas were not delimited in a vast area with difficult terrain for only 40 or so people who participated.
The situation was consolidated this year as chaotic and discouraging for family members.
“The whole of Mexico is a clandestine grave,” Herrera said in May. EFE
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