Mexico's drug war disappearances: "official government list" still proves nothing

MGR News Analysis


*Updated May 24*
Guadalajara -
Mexico's new Institutional Revolutionary Party government has been busy for the past week fielding questions about the number of persons who have allegedly disappeared since the drug war was launched 75 months ago, on Dec. 11, 2006. Press reports in the United States have alleged, or strongly suggested, that tends of thousands of missing Mexicans fell victim in the last half dozen years to out of control security forces, including local and state police and Mexican army troops (Mexican officials dispute U.S. press reports on drug war disappearances: claims are based on nonexistent data).

On Feb. 22 Human Rights Watch delivered up a very anemic report on the subject, claiming that it had documented a grand total of 249 "forced disappearances," as they're called, 149 of which it said were the handwork of military units. Mexico's leading independent news network quickly demolished the allegations, saying they were "false, and not the product of a rigorous methodology. Hype always present in Mexico's drug war, especially with Human Rights Watch.

On Thursday an undersecretary of government in charge of the Human Rights department, Lía Limón, said "We do have a database, a list, in theory, of 27,000 persons who disappeared" from 2006-2012. But her boss, secretary of government Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, refuted that claim, politely but firmly rebuking his subordinate in the process. "There is no official list of the disappeared," Osorio Chong told the press. "We have very little data, very little proof."

Chong, it should be noted, is Enrique Peña Nieto's most powerful and influential cabinet member. He has the ear of the president in a way no other member of the new PRI government does.

The next to weigh in on the subject was the man officially charged with maintaining a database of the disappeared during the PAN administration of former president Felipe Calderón, Óscar Vega Marín. Until December 2012, Vega was head of a federal department called Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública. Here is what he said several days ago:

"The only list we ever had, and the only one Mexico's Attorney General ever had access to, contained 5,319 names of people who had been reported as missing. But it was at least a decade old. We were eventually able to locate 422 of those people. Some were alive, some had died."

Vega added, "I categorically reject the existence of the list [of 27,000] alluded to by some press sources, both domestic and international, supposedly based on a leak by the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexico's Attorney General).

On Monday another federal agency known as Províctima (Procuraduría Social de Atención a Víctimas del Delito) entered the fray, reporting that it had files on a mere 1,708 people, based on reports obtained directly from immediate family members. Because Províctima's list was based upon first hand information rather than on rumors or anecdotal accounts, some were inclined to view it as the most credible, and certainly the freshest, data available.

But yesterday things came full circle. La señora Limón was back on stage again in Mexico City, front and center at a heavily attended press conference, where she told the world that there is indeed an "official" list of the missing, and that it contains 26,121 names. Limón dodged the inevitable question from reporters: "But Secretary Osorio Chong said just last week there was no database . . ."

Limón made some striking admissions, to be sure, although they're likely to be ignored north of the border. First, she stressed that the government's database - the one her boss said didn't exist less than a week ago - still had to be thoroughly depurado. The word means cleaned up, edited, purged, verified - none of which terms instill much confidence in its reliability.

Second, Limón emphasized that most of the people on the list should not be presumed to have been victims of any type of criminal activity, much less kidnappings and "forced disappearances" at the hands of government security forces. "Many of these people may have migrated, may have been the victims of natural disasters, or may have simply left home because of family conflicts," noted Limón. She said the same was true with respect to the list of 5,300 compiled by the Calderón administration.

Even if every name on the suddenly materialized database represented a civilian drug war victim, they would collectively account for but two tenths of one percent of Mexico's 112 million citizens. But they don't represent that at all, and we've now been "officially" told so by Enrique Peña Nieto's government.

Some journalists north of the border, and not a few here, need to sit down in front of the keyboard and truthfully report what the late, great radio broadcaster Paul Harvey used to call, the rest of the story.

May 24 - Osorio Chong told a press conference for foreigner reporters today that the infamous list of 26,121 "disappeared persons" is being reviewed, updated and compared to other available databases, and is expected to decrease significantly when the work is completed later this year.

Feb. 19 - NY Times figures out, in Mexican drug war Enrique Peña Nieto = Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
Nov. 21, 2011 - The L.A. Times just doesn't get it

Mexico's undersecretary of government Lía Limón, forced to juggle numbers once again
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