Mexican Secretary of the Interior Luisa María Alcalde. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

The Mexican federal government currently has 99,729 people registered as ‘missing’ across the country, Secretary of the Interior Luisa María Alcalde reported during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) daily morning press conference on Monday, March 18.

“We can establish that 110,964 missing persons is the record that was made public in August,” said Alcalde at the time. “Now, there has been an increase of 9,424 additional missing persons reports to date with a cut-off date of March 15. This has to do with the federal entities that are increasing or updating this registry.”

“Here we must subtract 5,576 people who have already been located since August and who have already been formalized in the missing persons registry, which gives us a total of 114,815,” continued the Segob head. “Then we must subtract from this figure another 15,158, who are people that we have already been located with the methodology set forth by the Head of Government with proof of life but whose location is not yet formalized; therefore, there are currently 99,729 records of people that we are still in the search process.” 

Alcalde also noted that the AMLO administration had located 3,512 people between January and March 2023, bringing the federal government’s total number of missing persons located to 20,193 across López Obrador’s six-year term.

Mexico City Head of Government Martí Batres went on to say that the majority of missing persons in Mexico are not victims of violent crimes.

“This does not mean that all these people, these disappearances, are forced disappearances,” said Batres. “The vast majority of the 99,729 are voluntary absences. Of the people located, 86 percent percent were not victims of crime, they were located at their home or an alternate address.”

“Four percent are related to crimes provided for in the general law on forced disappearance of people and disappearance committed by private individuals and 10 percent were the victim of some other type of crime, mainly family violence,” concluded the Mexican capital’s head of government.