#SinLasFamiliasNo
Without consulting the searching families and in response to the discovery of an extermination site at Rancho Izaguirre in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum introduced various reforms to the General Population Law and the General Law on Forced Disappearances of Persons, Disappearances Committed by Individuals, and the National System for the Search for Persons. Some of the most notable proposals include the creation of a National System for immediate alert, search, and location of persons, as well as the creation of a Single Identity Platform.
However, many of these measures—which seem “novel” for a political project like the 4T, which decided to ignore the disappearance crisis—were already contained in the legal framework in force since 2018, which never materialized during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who never acknowledged how unacceptable it was to live in a country with more than 126,000 missing people.
During López Obrador’s six-year term, the budget for the search for missing persons decreased, the institutions that were created to combat this crime underwent changes that meant setbacks in their search actions, and even the Extraordinary Forensic Identification Mechanism was dismantled. These were some of the accusations that more than a hundred search groups in the country made to President Claudia Sheinbaum when she announced that she would present a series of reforms to the General Law on Forced Disappearance of Persons, Disappearances Committed by Individuals, and the National System for the Search for Persons. As such, they requested a meeting with her so she could listen to them directly and understand that perhaps more reforms are not needed, but rather to respect and implement the legal frameworks that have existed in the country since 2018.
Unfortunately, the meeting never took place, and the president, without consulting the searching families, presented her reforms on the issue of disappearances:
“These are reforms to two laws to facilitate and expand investigations related to cases of enforced disappearance by private individuals, both by the Prosecutor’s Offices and the Search Commissions, as well as the need to strengthen identity in order to advance investigations,” the president explained in her morning press conference.
However, the problem for the searching families is that the current president of the National Search Commission, Guadalupe Reyes Sahagún, not only lacks the appropriate technical qualifications for the position, but also “has not shown any openness to dialogue with the country’s victims,” they explained.
Statement from National Movement for Our Disappeared
In a press release, the National Movement for Our Disappeared—which brings together more than 100 groups across the country—stated that, while they recognize the president’s belated interest in the issue, it is necessary to reiterate that the participation of families must be included, as they were the ones who learned to search when the authorities failed to do so. A fruit of this wealth of knowledge is the laws that President Sheinbaum is amending without taking into account the opinions of the country’s searching families.
“We respectfully call for a participatory space for dialogue that considers the various victim platforms and where proposals are presented to us. From the MNDM, we have put forward an initial proposal of five pillars of the agenda for dialogue: search and security, identification, data and information systems, well-being, and prevention.”
They also noted that on two occasions—in May and October 2024—they sought to meet with Claudia Sheinbaum, but never received a response from her: “We have always been prepared to dialogue and build with the authorities because finding the people we are searching for and love also depends on that.”
An obligation that occurs without listening to the searching families
During the morning press conference, the president emphasized that the Mexican government has an obligation to address the problem—she never called it a crisis—of disappearances; therefore, they will be kind enough to report the number of missing persons, while the Ministry of the Interior and the National Search Commission (CNB) will be the bodies that will assist family members and search groups.
The problem with disclosing “the number of missing persons” is that there have been various initiatives that do not seek to measure the magnitude of the crisis, but rather to manage the tragedy, as happened with the “census of missing persons” carried out by the López Obrador administration.
In this regard, the National Movement for Our Disappeared noted that the problem is not only in stating how many people are missing, but also in ensuring that the presentation of these statistics is accompanied by information that also allows us to know the number of locations, the effectiveness of the investigations, and the number of people brought before a judge for committing these crimes.
To achieve this, Sheinbaum stated that her government will promote actions to “prevent and address the crime of disappearance,” which will be done through the creation of the Single Identity Platform that “can be consulted by security institutions for the search and location of people.” Likewise, it will promote the strengthening of the Unique Population Registry Code (CURP) and the issuance of immediate alerts in the event of a reported disappearance.
However, all of these new actions for the search for missing persons are already contained in the current Disappearance Law, which also mandates the Mexican State to create a National Forensic Data Bank (Article 119), which the Attorney General’s Office has refused to implement. Nor has it wanted to launch the National Registry of Unidentified Deceased Persons.
“What are we proposing with these laws? That, in the case of investigations related to high-impact crimes, such as disappearances, all databases be available for searches,” the president emphasized.
In the presentation of these reforms, the legal advisor to the Federal Executive Branch, Ernestina Godoy Ramos, emphasized that the objective of all this is to “create a system that allows for the real-time exchange of information between authorities, institutions, and individuals”; something that also already exists but has not been implemented.
She also pointed out that it is necessary to “involve society in the search process through timely information or reports.” Therefore, the goal is to create a system that allows the entire country to be alerted quickly and accurately when someone’s disappearance is reported. This, in turn, entails “the strengthening of state prosecutors’ offices so that the investigation is more agile and effective.” This will also eliminate the need for mere collaboration documents that never translate into actions and/or search plans.
“We seek to guarantee immediate attention to any complaint, to make the search for individuals more efficient through technology, science, and inter-institutional coordination, and to guarantee the right to identity and the protection of the State, using the CURP (National Registry of Civil Registry) widely,” explained Godoy Ramos.
Specifically, the reforms presented by President Sheinbaum seek to:
• Create a National System for Alerting about, Searching for, and Locating Missing Persons. This could duplicate what the National Search Commission already does.
• Create a Single Identity Platform: based on the CURP (National Identity Document) of all Mexicans and foreign residents. This would be the tool for generating alerts, searches, and locating missing persons.
• Incorporate the CURP (National Identity Document) as an official identification system with a photograph and fingerprints; this would be mandatory in administrative records at all three levels of government and would be capable of real-time queries.
• Create a National Database of Investigation Files for Missing and Unlocated Persons, a body that must open an investigation file immediately upon any report of disappearance, rather than waiting 72 hours.
• Strengthen and expand the National Forensic Data Bank managed by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) by extending it to state prosecutors’ offices so they can provide information; however, this does not exist, and the presentation assumes its existence and operation.
• Regarding the above, it was noted that there will be immediate real-time linking of databases so that the data is compulsorily connected to the Single Identity Platform, as it integrates Antemortem (AM) and Postmortem (PM) records, Amber Alerts, and others. This is also not operational in practice; in fact, the AM/PM Protocols are not always implemented.
• Strengthen the capacities of prosecutors’ offices with specialized investigation units, context analysis units, immediate and long-term search areas, specialized cybercrime areas, and victim assistance units. In addition, minimum mandatory profiles for the staff of these specialized prosecutors’ offices are established. Currently, not all states in the country have this.
• Include private entities in the obligation to generate and share information useful for searching for people, such as those related to financial services, transportation, healthcare, telecommunications, parcel delivery, and, in general, all those with useful information that contributes to search efforts. Currently, for example, a call log takes a long time to be requested by a judge and even longer to be delivered by cell phone companies.
• Increase the penalties for those who commit the crimes of enforced disappearance and disappearance committed by private individuals. However, higher penalties will be of no use if only a few cases are brought before a judge.
Original article by Darwin Franco, Zona Docs, March 24th, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.