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WORLD NEWS Tuesday 1 March 2022
Mexico's efforts paltry in face of nearly 100,000 missing

By MARÍA VERZA For years, the government
Associated Press looked the other way as
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico violence increased and
(AP) — For the investigators, families of the missing were
the human foot -- burned, forced to become detec-
but with some fabric still tives.
attached -- was the tipoff: It wasn't until 2018 -- the
Until recently, this squat, end of the last administra-
ruined house was a place tion -- that a law passed,
where bodies were ripped laying the legal founda-
apart and incinerated, tions for the government
where the remains of some to establish the National
of Mexico's missing multi- Search Commission. There
tudes were obliterated. followed local commissions
How many disappeared in every state; protocols
in this cartel "extermina- that separated searches
tion site" on the outskirts of from investigations, and a
Nuevo Laredo, miles from temporary and indepen-
the U.S. border? After six dent body of national and
months of work, forensic international technical ex-
technicians still don't dare perts supported by the U.N.
offer an estimate. In a sin- to help clear the backlog
gle room, the compacted, of unidentified remains.
burnt human remains and The official total of the miss-
debris were nearly 2 feet ing stands at 98,234. Even
deep. without the civil wars or
At the site -- to which The military dictatorships that
Associated Press was given afflicted other Latin Ameri-
access this month -- the can countries, Mexico's
insufficiency of investiga- A forensic technician, guarded by a National Guardsman, stands inside a ruined house where disappeared are exceed-
bodies were ripped apart and incinerated, on a plot of land referred to as a cartel "extermination
tions into Mexico's nearly site", on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. ed in the region only by
100,000 disappearances is Associated Press war-torn Colombia. Unlike
painfully evident. There are other countries, Mexico's
52,000 unidentified people fragments, too many miss- fire echoed in the distance. ed States. challenge still has no end:
in morgues and cemeter- ing, too many dead. Nearly six months later, Most who disappeared authorities and families
ies, not counting places like Meanwhile there is no prog- there are still more than here were truck drivers, search for people who dis-
this one, where the charred ress in bringing the guilty to 30,000 square feet of prop- cabbies, but also at least appeared in the 1960s and
remains are measured only justice. According to recent erty to inspect and cata- one family and various U.S. those who went missing to-
by weight. data from Mexico's federal log. citizens. About a dozen day.
And people continue to auditor, of more than 1,600 The house has been have been found alive. President Andrés Manuel
disappear. And more re- investigations into disap- cleared, but four black- Last July, Karla Quintana, López Obrador's govern-
mains are found. pearances by authorities ened spaces used for cre- head of the National ment was the first to rec-
"We take care of one case or cartels opened by the mation remain. In what was Search Commission, said ognize the extent of the
and 10 more arrive," said attorney general's office, the bathroom, it took the the disappearances ap- problem, to talk of "extermi-
Oswaldo Salinas, head of none made it to the courts technicians three weeks peared to be related to nation sites" and to mount
the Tamaulipas state attor- in 2020. to carefully excavate the a dispute between the effective searches.
ney general's identification Still, the work goes on at compacted mass of hu- Jalisco New Generation But he also promised in
team. Nuevo Laredo. If nothing man remains, concrete cartel, which was trying to 2019 that authorities would
Uncounted bone frag- else, there is the hope of and melted tires, said Sa- enter the area, and the have all the resources they
ments were spread across helping even one fam- linas, who leads work at Northeast cartel, which needed. The national com-
75,000 square feet of desert ily find closure, though that the site. Grease streaks the wanted to keep them out. mission, which was sup-
scrubland outside Nuevo can take years. walls. It's not clear if the victims posed to have 352 employ-
Laredo. Twisted wires, ap- That's why a forensic tech- Macías found the Nuevo were smugglers of drugs or ees this year, still has just 89.
parently used to tie the vic- nician smiled amid the dev- Laredo house last August people, if some were ab- And Macías' state commis-
tims, lie scattered amid the astation on a recent day: when he was looking for ducted mistakenly or if the sion has 22 positions bud-
scrub. She had found an unburnt more than 70 people who goal was simply to gener- geted, but has only filled a
Each day, technicians tooth, a treasure that might had disappeared in the ate terror. dozen slots. There the issue
place what they find -- offer DNA to make an iden- first half of the year along The phenomenon of Mex- isn't money; the difficulty
bones, buttons, earrings, tification possible. a stretch of highway con- ico's disappearances ex- is finding applicants who
scraps of clothing -- in pa- When Jorge Macías, head necting Monterrey and ploded in 2006 when the pass background checks.
per bags labeled with their of the Tamaulipas state Nuevo Laredo, the busiest government declared "This issue is a monster,"
contents: "Zone E, Point search commission, and his trade crossing with the Unit- war on the drug cartels. Macías said.q
53, Quadrant I. Bone frag- team first came to the Nue-
ments exposed to fire." vo Laredo site, they had LIKE US ON
They are sent off to the fo- to clear brush and pick up
rensic lab in the state capi- human remains over the fi-
tal Ciudad Victoria, where nal 100 yards just to reach
boxes of paper bags wait the house without destroy-
their turn along with oth- ing evidence. They found
ers. They will wait a long a barrel tossed in a trough,
time; there are not enough shovels and an axe with Facebook.com/arubatoday/
resources and too many traces of blood on it. Gun-