Veracruz is facing a crisis of disappearances with emblematic cases remaining unresolved. Despite governmental efforts, the lack of progress and budget cuts worsen the situation.
By Yamiri Rodríguez Madrid
Journalist FORO HUMANOS
While this report was in the investigation and data collection phase, 32 groups of relatives of missing persons held a four-day sit-in in front of the Government Palace of Veracruz to demand that the authorities speed up the investigations of their loved ones. Part of the protest included the closure of roads in Xalapa, a city of just over 700 thousand inhabitants.
Guillermo Muñoz Roa was a dairy product seller. He disappeared on November 16, 2011 in the capital of Veracruz. Twelve years later, his mother, María Antonieta Muñoz Roa, is still looking for him.
His son was at a meeting and from there they took him along with another person, who was his friend and this, in turn, the nephew of a former state attorney. Marie Antoinette was away from Mexico, but when she returned she began to investigate. Seven years later, the authority began offering rewards for anyone who gave information about her whereabouts. Her son still does not appear, so she is part of the collective “Looking for our missing people.”
“The governor (Cuitláhuac García Jiménez) shows his inefficiency as president, since he is not looking after the interests of the common good of the state, which is the safety of families, the search and identification of our missing relatives,” he said.
The government of Veracruz and the families affected by disappearances
Another of the mothers who still do not have peace is Victoria Delgadillo Romero. Her daughter, Yureny Citlalli Hernández Delgadillo, disappeared on November 28, 2011, also 12 years ago, along with 12 other young women. They had been hired as aide-de-camp; They would be paid 500 pesos an hour (approximately $25) to attend an event in Actopan, a municipality near Xalapa. Her two children are waiting for her next to her; today teenagers.
“He says (referring to the Governor) that, from 2019 to date, 7,930 bodies have been found or located; he says it’s 60 percent. Let the Lord (Cuitláhuac García Jiménez) tell us who and where those bodies are from, because we don’t know. If there are 7,930 bodies that have been found, then how many are missing from the state of Veracruz? Tell us the figure. There is no progress in the investigation folders, those of us who do the investigations are the families,” he pointed out.
The state government argued that progress in victim care includes the management of federal funds, a greater presence in the Veracruz territory, an increase in the workforce, the expansion of victim care spaces, inter-institutional coordination and care. personalized, since at the beginning of this government, in 2018, the CEEAIV had a budget of a little less than 6 million pesos, this 2023 it was 100 million. In 2018 the CEEAIV had 4 legal advisors, today there are 60; From four psychologists it went to 21 in 2023, and it did not have any social workers, today it has seven.
Figures and Actions: the panorama of assistance to victims in Mexico
In 2019, 303 victims were supported with economic measures to help with transfers, funeral expenses, and experts; In 2023, 1,106 victims have benefited.
Since 2019, 4,372 supports in food expenses have been granted to victims of disappearance and feminicide, and 485 for vulnerability. 234 victims have been compensated with the compensation measure, and 4,666 victims have benefited from aid measures for transfers and funeral expenses.
The federal subsidy in 2018 was 7 million, but in 2023 it reached 24 million pesos and, since 2019, 757 long-term searches have been carried out in forensic scenarios with the participation of relatives and groups of victims, and 72 searches in scenarios of long life in the same number of cases.
Since 2019, the Commission has located 7,320 people alive and 610 dead; The Temporary Shelter Center is being created based in Coatzacoalcos with a federal investment of 55 million pesos, which will begin operations in 2024.
Throughout the country, the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons (RNPDNO) reports 113,142 missing and unlocated persons, from 1962 until now. To this amount we must add 12,861 people who were located, but dead.
Affected States: Veracruz Among the Most Affected by Disappearances
As stated by the source itself, “more than 65% of the reports (both disappearances, non-locations and locations with and without life), between 1964 and the present, have been reported since 2019.” The main sources that feed the registry are the Prosecutor’s Offices (64.10%), the National and local Search Commissions (31%), other authorities (1.12%) and any person who is not an authority (3.78%).g
“Among the challenges of the RNPDNO is the resistance of various institutions to register or share information. Any information that is not displayed in the RNPDNO is because it has not been provided by the federal or local authority that made the report. In that sense, the percentage of information registration in the RNPDNO by the authorities is very low. Thus, for example, although there is a 99.98% capture of the variable on the “name of the missing person”, 100% on the “sex”, 92.67% on the “age” and 92.59% on the “place of disappearance”; The percentage of capture of the “crime” variable is equivalent to 16.11% of the total records of missing persons,” he specifies.
The Mexican states with the highest number of missing people are State of Mexico, Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Sinaloa and, again, Veracruz with 13,884 missing people, of which 4,661 are women.
Of that universe, the same government source shows that since the current government began, that is, December 1, 2018, there are 2,301 Veracruz residents who have still not appeared. Among the 30 municipalities with the highest incidence of disappearances of people are Veracruz Puerto, with 1,177 reports; Xalapa with 946; Coatzacoalcos, with 403; Córdoba, 374 and Poza Rica with 264.
Recent reports on clandestine graves in Mexico
Along with these data, in Mexico there is a National Registry of Clandestine Graves. From 2006 to 2018 alone, 2,835 clandestine graves were documented, plus another 293 without a registered discovery entity. These official data indicate that, after Tamaulipas, Veracruz is the second with the highest number of graves, with 324.
But a report prepared by the Universidad Ibero Ciudad de México, called Search between pain and hope. Finds of clandestine graves in Mexico 2020-2022 revealed the existence of 1,134 clandestine graves with 2,314 bodies and 2,242 human remains throughout Mexico.
The study also indicates that the count derived from the investigation showed that the 1,134 graves in Mexican territory were reported in 305 municipalities and that the five states in which the most municipalities reported findings of clandestine graves are Veracruz with 41 municipalities, Guanajuato with 24 municipalities, Michoacán with 18 municipalities and Jalisco and Oaxaca with 16 municipalities.
These five states concentrate 38% of the municipalities where graves were documented, with 155 municipalities in total. “It is important to note that, outside of Guanajuato, the states mentioned above are not entities with a high number of reports, this is relevant because it allows us to observe that there are states with a high number of reports (such as Sonora and Guerrero) where the findings are concentrated in a few municipalities, while there are states where the distribution of clandestine graves is widespread”
Disappearance crisis
And the University Observatory of Violence against Women, of the Universidad Veracruzana (UV) affirms that this year alone 683 Veracruzanas have disappeared; 376 of them, minors.
Despite these figures, next year’s budget for the search for missing people in Veracruz is only 24 million 924 thousand pesos, the equivalent of 144 thousand dollars, a decrease of almost 8 percent compared to this year.
“Our missing relatives continue to be present in each administration (…) The austerity strategy that has characterized the government, instead of benefiting, is harming the search work on a large scale, since instead of increasing the budget for the institutions that are those in charge of caring for victims and searching for missing people, their budget was significantly reduced and this lack of budget for the institutions results in poor work,” María Antonieta Roa also commented.
To measure the size of the crisis of disappearances in this Mexican state, every day, on the Facebook page of the State Search Commission of Veracruz, on average 10 to 12 search tokens are issued; most of them, people under 30 years of age.
The struggle persists: affected families confronting the mexican forensic reality
At the national level, according to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI), in 2022 there were 10,951 experts in the coordination or units of expert services and forensic medical service in Mexico. The most frequent specialty of the personnel in the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) was forensic chemistry, while in the state prosecutor’s offices it was criminology. The report also indicates that the institutions of forensic and forensic services spent a total of 4,359.9 million pesos and, of that budget, 30.2 percent corresponded to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and 69.8 percent to the unit’s state.
130,470 corpses and human remains were received, of which 62.0 percent were identified, 37.6 percent were not identified and 0.4 percent were pending identification. Likewise, 86,929 bodies or human remains were discharged: 71,990 identified and 14,939 unidentified. Of those identified, 99.0 percent were handed over to their families. 53,347 corpses or human remains were stored in amphitheaters, laboratories and forensic storage centers. Of these, 10.9 percent were identified, 87.6 percent were not identified, and 1.5 percent were yet to be identified
Hence the struggle of the relatives of the missing does not stop for a single day.
