The Mexico administration admits that the number of missing and killed following the cartel wars is much higher than experts thought: "Partial data provided, numbers even higher"

• Missing families demonstrating // Photo: IPA

The Guardian newspaper said Tuesday that Mexican authorities admitted for the first time this week that since the start of the country's 2006 drug cartel war, some 62,000 people have not been found to date. This is a higher number than the previous estimates, which were 40,000. This disturbing number joins the fact that in 2019 alone, wars were fought between the gangs and themselves, and in the battle with the regime, some 31,000 people, a significant increase in the number of cartel war victims compared to previous years.

Unsettlingly, authorities have found 873 secret burial sites in the past year, including 1124 bodies, of which only 395 have been identified and returned to the 243 missing families brought to burial. Also in the past year, another 5184 people have disappeared in Mexico, local media chief Alejandro Anchinas, head of the country's human rights secretariat, said.

Photo: Reuters

Another senior member of the media briefing was Mexico's top Missing Detection Commissioner Carla Quintana, who handed the final number of missing persons known to the authorities: 61,637 people, who have since disappeared in 2006 by then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon, for his national war on state drug barons. Quintana said in the hearing that "each of these people is a complete world. It is an unimaginable number of missing persons, with any such disappearance being a story of pain for her family."

Meanwhile, some believe that the number presented by the authorities is still not completely true to reality, which is even more difficult. Ernest Falco, a local crisis expert who lives in Mexico, responded to publications in a tweet in which he said "12 counties in the country have only given partial numbers. In fact, the number is higher, and today's publications are just the first step towards the perception of the harsh reality here."

These unimaginable numbers explain the huge challenge facing Mexico's president since 2018, leftist Andres Manuel Manuel Lopes Overdor, who has vowed to restore peace to the state. Trust in President Lopes, who announced a "hug and no bullet" policy to stop the crime, is beginning to decline, and the Mexican public is questioning whether this idea has failed on the ground, due to what appears to be the overall rampage of cartels and police across the state. It should be noted that the President's new experience comes after many years of stubborn war in the cartels in violent ways, a war that has not succeeded as well, and it seems that the eradication of crime in the Latin giant country is far away.

One of the personal stories is Jesse Braggs (62), who is looking for his brother Jose, a kidnapped businessman who disappeared from his farm on the US border and has not been since. Jesse, who has been assisted by the government, has already issued 4 search missions, with the shipments secured By armed military forces, he said, "There are places in the country that also have 20 dangerous armor to enter. I can't believe I found my brother anymore, scoured 20 miles around the farm to find the body. Meanwhile, in one of the expeditions, we found a young woman's skeleton with a bullet in her head. The skeleton was just thrown there. I will continue to search not only because of my brother, but because each of these tens of thousands of missing persons is my brother. "