Accusations are being leveled at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for allegedly downplaying the crisis of Mexico’s missing individuals. Family members of the disappeared claim that the president is effectively making the issue invisible.
Demonstrators are taking to the streets, seeking justice for the 43 vanished students from Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College, their hope and wait persisting. A body was recently uncovered near a luxurious golf course in Culiacán, Sinaloa, by a determined group of relatives who have united in the search for their loved ones. While authorities are expected to identify the remains and consult the national registry of the disappeared, María Isabel Cruz, who has been searching for her son since 2017, doubts this will happen.
With the upcoming elections, President López Obrador’s approach to the missing persons issue appears to be one of avoidance. Last June, he initiated a new census of the disappeared to ascertain the precise number of missing individuals. However, by December, the government had drastically reduced the official count of the missing from the registry, acknowledging only 12,377 out of 110,964 as confirmed missing. Ms. Cruz, adorned with a T-shirt proclaiming Hasta encontrarlos (Until we find them), expressed her shock at the significant reduction, suggesting that the administration is attempting to erase the existence of the disappeared.
Source: The Economist
