Mexico says 40,000 of country’s 130,000 disappeared people may be alive

By Stephen Eisenhammer

MEXICO CITY, March 27 (Reuters) – Mexican authorities said on Friday they have potentially identified more than 40,000 people listed as disappeared who may be alive, by cross-referencing official databases such as tax records and marriage registries.

After a year-long review of the national registry of missing persons, officials said 40,308 entries – 31% of the total – showed some activity across other government records such as tax filings or birth certificates, suggesting those people could be alive and locatable.

Of those, authorities have so far located and confirmed the identities of 5,269 people, allowing their cases to be reclassified as “found.”

POOR RECORDS CONTRIBUTE TO MISSING CASES

Mexico has over 130,000 missing people, a consequence of decades of drug violence as cartels have expanded their reach and power. But the government said the figure is also the result of a poorly managed database riddled with errors, missing information, and duplication. 

About 46,000 records – roughly 36% – lack basic information such as names, dates or places of disappearance, making searches impossible. Officials said the registry was initially compiled by uploading unverified lists from federal and state prosecutors, search commissions, citizen reports and activist groups, creating duplication and incomplete entries.

A further 43,128 cases do have complete records but show no activity through cross-referencing with other government databases. But of that figure, fewer than 10% are under criminal investigation, a gap officials said reflects years of failure by prosecutors and law enforcement. 

Disappearances surged after 2006, when Mexico launched its war on drug cartels. Of those still missing, 130,178 date from 2006 onwards, while 2,356 are legacy cases from 1952 to 2005, many linked to forced disappearances by state agents.

The public policy group Mexico Evalua found there has been a 200% increase in disappearances over the last decade, a consequence of the growing power of organized crime groups.

Officials on Friday stressed that no records would be removed from the public registry, only reclassified as people are located, and said new legal reforms now block entries without minimum data.

“We will continue looking for all disappeared people until finding them,” Marcela Figueroa, a top security official, said at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s morning press conference.

Mexican political analyst Viri Rios said any changes to the list of disappeared people are controversial because mothers searching for their children fear that legitimate cases may be erased by mistake or negligence.

But she said for decades the registry was managed with “very little control,” with cases added to the registry haphazardly and authorities neglecting to follow them up.

“Local prosecutors’ offices will now be required, will be obligated, to open investigation files for all disappearance cases, and that is a major step,” Rios said.

(Reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer; Additional reporting by Inigo Alexander; Editing by Emily Green, Rod Nickel)