National: Names of almost 11 Thousand Disappeared Persons Deleted from Official Register

In mid-March, the civil society organization Civic Data (Data Civica) presented the digital platform “Disappeared Again,” through which different records of missing people are compared. Through this exercise, it detected that 10,953 names of people were deleted between the most updated version of the official database of missing persons and that of August 2023. Presumably these changes should correspond to located people, although some families have confirmed that the name of their still missing loved one is among these deletions. Hence the name of Civic Data’s work: upon being deleted from the list, “they have disappeared again. Hence the importance of revealing these names, since it is the only way in which families can be sure that a person has not been wrongly located.’’

The list of ten thousand names deleted from the national registry of missing persons was made available to the public, so that families searching for their loved ones can verify if the authority eliminated their cases from the official registry, even without the victims having been really found. 66% of the list corresponds to people of the male gender and the remaining (34%) to people of the female gender.

On March 19th, the Secretary of the Interior, Luisa Maria Alcalde, said in a press conference with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) that there are 99,729 missing people in Mexico. The figure was the result of the authorities subtracting more than 20,000 cases under the argument that, according to their records, around 5,576 victims had already been located and their registration had been formalized, and another 15,158 had allegedly been found, but they had no formal record. She also stated that not all reports of missing persons are recorded, since the vast majority are voluntary absences and of the people located “86% were not victims of crime.”

The executive director of Civic Data, Monica Meltis, assured that the attitude of the federal government has generated more uncertainty and re-victimizes the families of the disappeared, since the authorities are not specific with the way in which they counted the victims.

She stressed that concepts such as ‘located without formalized registration’ “are not provided for in the law, but beyond that, they generate enormous confusion and contribute to the pain of families.”

“They boast many results, as they did yesterday morning, without this being supported by any publication of any record,” said the organization’s data analysis coordinator, Alicia Franco, for her part.

For more information in Spanish:

Casi 11 mil nombres de desaparecidos fueron borrados de registros del gobierno, alerta Data Cívica (Desinformémonos, 20 de marzo de 2024)

Data Cívica detecta 11 mil nombres borrados entre bases de desaparecidos del gobierno (Aristegui Noticias, 19 de marzo de 2024)

Segob: hay 99 mil 729 desaparecidos en México (El Universal, 19 de marzo de 2024)

Desaparecer dos veces: estos son 10 mil nombres que el censo borró de lista oficial de desaparecidos (Animal Político, 13 de marzo de 2024)

Plataforma Volver a Desaparecer (Data Cívica)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional/Internacional: buscadores de desaparecidos piden protección en audiencia ante la CIDH (March 1,2024)