In Mexico, there are 61,637 missing persons

México City-- The Undersecretary of Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas, presented on Monday a new official figure on missing persons, 54% higher than the 40,000 reported until 2018.

The report presented by Encinas includes reports of disappearances from the 1960s, although most of the data corresponds to the period beginning in 2006, when the war on drug trafficking began.

The new figure is an update after reviewing the state prosecutor's reports and debugging the different databases in the country.

This allowed the government to find many cases of complaints of disappearance that were classified differently. There was also a subregistry.

Several prosecutors did not deliver the complete information to the National Search Commission, the federal government agency that addresses the problem.

It is one of the reasons for the growth in figures, explains the official.

But also in the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador the disappearance of people is approached differently, says Encinas.

“It must be said, it was intended for a long time to minimize and make this problem invisible,” said the official.

“That leads to another problem, they classified the crimes differently, not in all cases they are credited as disappearance but as kidnapping or illegal deprivation of liberty.”

The number of missing persons may vary, recognizes Deputy Secretary Encinas, because eleven of the 32 prosecutors in the country have not finished reviewing and debugging the information.

The war against the cartels.

Another reason for the new historical figure is that violence in the country does not stop.

In the first year of López Obrador's management, 5,184 missing persons were reported, an amount less than in the previous years. In 2018, for example, 5,976 disappeared were officially registered.

Jalisco, in western Mexico, is the state with the most reports of missing people with 2,100 cases.

For three years there has been an internal dispute in the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of the strongest drug trafficking organizations in the country.

According to civil organizations many of the cases of disappearance of people are linked to this battle.

But in addition, Jalisco is the state in which last year was found the largest number of clandestine graves.

The report of Undersecretary Encinas indicates that last year 873 of these places were found, of which 1,124 bodies were exhumed.

The second state with the highest number of disappeared and clandestine graves is Tamaulipas, in the northeast of the country.

There is also a war between drug traffickers in Tamaulipas. The Northeast (CDN) and Gulf cartels have maintained an intense battle for drug trafficking routes to the United States since 2018.

In fact, last weekend, the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo issued a security alert to American citizens, to avoid traveling to the city.

And for several days there were fighting between La Tropa del Infierno, the armed branch of the CDN, against state police.

However, violence by the war against and between drug cartels is not the only cause of the problem of disappearances.

Alejandro Encinas acknowledges that there is also a serious problem with the actions of police officers, responsible for the disappearance of many people.

“We have pointed out that most of the disappearances are associated with people linked to criminal activities,” he said. “But there is a very significant percentage of people missing due to state institutions or agencies, particularly at the local level.” (BBC)