The Government will include all wanted persons, even if there has been no complaint. The previous number of victims was 40 thousand. They want the new system to be in the open.

The official number of missing persons in Mexico because of the wave of violence that has plagued the country since 2006 increased by 30 per cent, from 40 thousand to 52 thousand, after the state agency modified the calculation methodology.

The new methodology takes into account not only the people who were reported missing but also “all those without complaint,” said the head of the National People Search Commission (CNBP), Karla Quintana.

She explained that this is “a new missing persons reporting system that is in accordance with what the law says.”

The number of missing persons, which thus rose from 40 thousand to 52 thousand, corresponds to the period initiated at the end of 2006 when President Felipe Calderón began his term, who declared war on organized crime, which so far has left some 274 thousand dead.

The new form of measurement “responds to the reality of Mexico,” where “we know that many people do not report because they are afraid to do so,” Quintana said.

“We are not researchers, we are seekers and, as such, what we need to know is not only how many people we are looking for,” she added.

Not just a number

Quintana stressed that “it is not just a number”, but “have more elements to find them.”

In Mexico, the issue of the missing is closely linked to the abundant clandestine graves that house the remains of thousands of people killed by criminal organizations.

Official estimates indicate that there are at least 3,600 clandestine graves containing around five thousand bodies. “It is an overwhelming, terrifying fact; Entire Mexico is a clandestine grave,” Quintana said.

The government of President Andrés López Obrador initiated a little over a year ago, ordered a grave registry, a national program to search for missing persons and an extraordinary forensic identification mechanism, which have not yet been launched.

In addition, it doubled, up to the equivalent of about 20 million dollars, the budget for local search commissions.

Alejandro Encinas, Undersecretary of Human Rights of the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, acknowledged days ago that the federal government has not obtained the expected security results. “We inherited a humanitarian crisis that reached alarming figures, like the whole issue related to the disappearance and non-identification of people.”

Mexico registers 25 million victims of crime every year, a figure that is difficult to understand and make intelligible.

Marina and Mauricio, two of the last

Marina Galván Ponce and Mauricio Esquivel Roger were reported missing on Friday night.

Both young people, 24, were traveling from Mexico City to Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state.