Mexico says a third of 130,000 missing people might be alive, fueling criticism from families
The discussion cut to the heart of fierce debate over how Mexico tracks disappearances.
Mexico’s government said in a new report Friday that it identified signs of life for a third of the country’s 130,000 registered missing people, an announcement that was quickly criticized by a number of search groups who called it another attempt to undermine the depth of Mexico’s disappearance crisis.
The mounting criticism cut to the heart of fierce debate over how Mexico tracks disappearances, which have soared since the beginning of the drug war in 2006. While authorities say figures are overcounted, families say the number of missing people in Mexico is actually far higher. Both blame what they see as a lack of reliable data on failures by local governments and deep-seated impunity.
Mexican authorities said Friday that by cross-referencing things like vaccination records, birth and marriage registries and tax filings, officials found that 40,367 people — around 31% of reported disappearances — showed some activity in government records since they’d been reported missing. Marcela Figueroa, a top security official, said it indicated that those people might still be alive.
Using that search method, and consulting with a number of search groups, she said that the government was able to track down 5,269 people and mark them as “found.”
Figueroa described many of those cases as “voluntary absences,” citing a number of examples of men leaving their partners for another woman being reported as missing and women running away from abusive relationships.
“Not all disappearances are the same,” she said, adding that the government was constantly working to locate Mexico’s missing people.
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Source: POLITICO
