Almost 100,000 missing in Mexico: the Government reduces the official figure by 20,000

The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has once again put a figure on the crisis of the missing in Mexico.

On this occasion, less than the one that had been made public for the last time.

According to the Secretary of the Interior, Luisa María Alcalde, the number of people whose whereabouts are unknown is 99,729.

The reduction is due, as explained this Monday in the morning conference, to the location of some 20,734 people between August of last year and March 15 of this year.

The current Administration is involved in controversy with the issue of the missing. On the one hand, last year the registration of those who were finally found fell by 60%, despite the mobilization of resources and public servants.

And on the other hand, complaints about the under-reporting of some cases in the national count have pointed fingers at the Government for the double disappearance of some people.

In the midst of the controversy, the authorities highlight that a new national search day is underway.

The numbers of missing persons for the López Obrador Government represent a mess from which they have not been able to get rid of easily.

Currently, the database of the National Search Commission indicates that the missing people who have not been located until this Monday are about 114,926.

But the Executive has said otherwise.

The explanation could be due to what the Mayor pointed out in the morning.

There are some 15,158 people who were found, but their registration has not yet been formalized.

That subtraction would leave the Government's official count at less than 100,000 missing people.

Of those who were found, according to the Executive, 4,696 were found in house-to-house visits, 4,629 through death reports, 10,717 were reported by local authorities as located and 191 were in penitentiary centers.

Another piece of information that they have insisted on is that 86% of those who were located said they had not been the victim of a crime.

A fact that at first may sound misleading, because it does not represent the crisis of the total number of missing people, but only of those who have returned to their homes.

One of the practices that the Executive, both federal and some State, has carried out was the generalized search.

As explained by the head of the capital's Government, Martí Batres, it is a technique in which information from all the agencies there is is crossed to find all the possible addresses where a person can live.

From there, a visit is made to each home in order to locate the person.

According to Batres, it is a methodology that has been very useful in Mexico City, where around half of the missing people are located per week, according to what has been stated.

The Mayor has also explained that they are currently carrying out a national search day, until March 25, in which they will visit some 31,000 new addresses in order to find more missing people.

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