Breathe
By Sonia Serrano Íñiguez
For several months now, when the map of the country is opened on the page of the National Search Commission (CMB) of the Ministry of the Interior, Jalisco stands out in bright red. For several months, Jalisco has been a land of missing persons.
In the most recent update, as of this writing, the National Registry of Missing and Unaccounted for Persons in Mexico established that Jalisco is in first place with 15,42 missing persons. Let's imagine: it is equivalent to filling the National Auditorium 1.5 times.
Despite the high number, the official data is no longer a reference to know the real situation of the state regarding this crime. The information published by the authorities is no longer reliable, mainly due to two situations. The first occurred on March 25, 2022, when Jalisco had reached 16,222 missing persons and, with no further explanation, it dropped to 14,915.
In addition to the above, the government of Jalisco decided to open a space to publish its own data, the Information System on Victims of Enforced Disappearance (Sisovid). According to the latest updated figures, there are 13,918 missing persons in Jalisco. The difference, with respect to national data, is 1,214 people. The difference is not minimal, since we are talking about human beings who have a history and who are surely being sought by someone who loves them.
The tendency of the authorities to manipulate the numbers on disappearances has gone hand in hand with their disdain for family groups. They are not listened to, the information sheets they place on the streets are removed only hours later, and most of the investigation files are basically made up with data provided by the families.
In parallel to the disappearances, Jalisco has stood out for the number of clandestine graves found in its territory and the number of bodies rescued from them.
According to the most recent data from the Special Prosecutor's Office on Missing Persons of the State Prosecutor's Office, 41 clandestine burial sites were located in 2020, the highest number so far in the current state administration, since the year in which more findings had been recorded was in 2019, a total of 36.
So far in the administration of the Movimiento Ciudadano governor, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, from 2018 to the beginning of 2023, 129 clandestine graves have been located. And the figure will grow, as this week the Prosecutor's Office confirmed that it is working in four different sites from which human remains have been exhumed, one of them in the municipality of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, which is part of the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara, from which more than 31 bodies have been rescued, so it could be one of the largest graves in the city.
In fact, Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, the first municipality governed by Movimiento Ciudadano, when the now governor Enrique Alfaro became mayor in 2009, is the district where more clandestine graves have been found, with a total of 55.
Of these clandestine sites found in Jalisco, 1,435 bodies have been recovered. The highest number of people buried in these graves was detected in 2020, with a total of 544.
A new problem for Jalisco has arisen from the clandestine graves, which is the forensic crisis. The bodies are buried in fractions, which has generated a significant delay in the identification and, therefore, the cross-referencing of information with the number of missing persons.
During the previous government, headed by former PRI governor Jorge Aristóteles Sandoval Díaz (assassinated in December 2020), a crisis was recorded in September 2018, when a trailer was discovered stranded and containing around 400 corpses. At that time it was decided to place them in the mobile refrigeration chamber because the space in the Forensic Medical Service of the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences was already insufficient, as around 800 bodies and human remains had accumulated.
In the current government there have been worse moments. After a request for information in which the data had first been denied and after a process of transparency had to be delivered, the IJCF confirmed that it had stored in its different spaces in June 2020 almost 3 thousand bodies and human remains, that is, more than three times as many as there were at the time of the crisis of the trailers.
In documents submitted via transparency, it was confirmed that even the body sections were being stored in simple plastic boxes, to be placed in the aisles of the refrigerators to take advantage of the space.
The situation has not changed and the collectives of relatives of the disappeared, who also maintain the search at the Forensic Medical Service, assure that the bodies continue to pile up.
The reality of Jalisco is a tragedy for thousands of families and the worst thing is that there seems to be no way out.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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