Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that she will sign a decree to enhance the national commission that is in charge of finding missing individuals and will present additional reforms to Congress. The action comes after the identification last week of a mass grave in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, that rekindled national alarms about the nation’s simmering crisis of disappearances.
Mexico has had more than 124,000 people go missing, mostly as a result of violence from drug cartels. Victims are frequently buried in secret graves, and the government is unable to give answers to the families. Citizen activists discovered the mass grave at a ranch in Jalisco, where they discovered ashes, bones, and hundreds of pieces of clothing, as well as crude ovens suspected to have been used for cremation.
The dark revelation precipitated weekend-wide protests and vigils calling for the government to take action. In turn, Sheinbaum promised to enforce reforms in bolstering search operations, centralizing missing persons data, and boosting case-reporting transparency.
Thursday will see her present a reform to Congress that will make it easier to identify missing persons, eliminate the 72-hour waiting period before an investigation can be conducted, and distinguish between kidnapping and disappearance cases. She stressed the government’s role in helping families and bringing about justice.
Officials have not estimated how many bodies were interred at the location. In the meantime, Jalisco’s prosecutor’s office has initiated an online database featuring close to 600 recovered objects such as clothes, suitcases, and backpacks so that families can try to identify their loved ones. Bullet casings and skeletal remains discovered at the site are also being analyzed by forensic experts.
Authorities will give additional information on the Jalisco case on Wednesday as Mexico ramps up efforts to combat its increasing crisis of enforced disappearances.
