Politics: Sheinbaum proclaims missing persons a national priority. Can she deliver on her pledge to tackle the issue?
The issue of missing and forcibly disappeared persons in Mexico has mushroomed into a major political and social controversy that has captivated public opinion and put the Claudia Sheinbaum administration on the defensive. The catalyst was the discovery of what has been called an extermination camp in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, complete with what appears to be a crematorium. Youth were lured with the promise of well-paid jobs, but were subject to brutal training to bring them into the ranks of the drug cartels. Those who couldn’t endure the training or wanted to leave, were executed, reportedly by their fellow would-be recruits. The Teuchitlán affair, however, was the tip of the iceberg, with similar clandestine graves reported in many other parts of the country. Indeed, the numbers of killings and missing persons in Mexico is astronomical: between 2007 and 2024 there have been 480,000 homicides and 57,000 individuals reported as missing, many presumed dead.
The authorities’ response had been to minimize the issue and question the agenda of the mothers’ search committees. However, with these new developments, President Sheinbaum has declared the issue nothing short of a national priority and announced a series of measures to strengthen mechanisms to search for and identify missing persons, thoroughly investigate Teuchitlán, and attend to the demands of the victims’ families.
This is no easy task. The state and national authorities responsible for search operations and forensic investigations are grossly inefficient, and their results deficient.
While the ineptitude and botched investigation by the authorities in Jalisco, governed by the opposition Citizens’ Movement, has been put under the spotlight, what has not been officially mentioned are possible links between federal authorities and elected Morena governors and legislators with organized crime. However, the social networks have been buzzing with such reports. Sheinbaum’s response has been to accuse her political opponents of orchestrating and financing a campaign in the social networks using the issue of the missing and disappeared to attack the government.
The issue will clearly not be going away anytime soon. Sheinbaum’s pledge to get to the bottom of the problem and not allow impunity is shaping up as a pivotal issue in Mexican politics.
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