More than 150 search collectives, activists and relatives of victims of abduction and enforced disappearance have expressed profound concern about President Claudia Sheinbaum’s response to Mexico’s missing persons crisis.
Sheinbaum announced six “immediate” actions against the crime of enforced disappearance at her Monday morning press conference, two weeks after the discovery of a so-called “extermination camp” in the state of Jalisco.
The actions she announced include strengthening the National Search Commission (CNB) and establishing new protocols that allow “immediate” search alerts to be issued when a person is reported as missing.
In an open letter to the president that seethes with anger and frustration, the search collectives, activists and relatives of missing persons responded to each of the six actions (see below).
The March 18 letter begins with an unequivocal denunciation of Sheinbaum’s plan.
“The families of missing people watched and listened to your response in the face of the disappearances crisis that is getting worse every day. We are deeply concerned about the proposal you make as it reflects a lack of knowledge about the institutional mechanisms and procedures that already exist in the country in search and investigation matters,” said the letter endorsed by search collectives including the Brigada Nacional de Búsqueda (National Search Brigade) and Buscando Nuestros Desaparecidos (Searching for our Missing Ones).
“Nos preocupa profundamente la propuesta que hace”: Más de 150 colectivos y activistas suscribieron una carta de respuesta al plan de seis puntos presentados por la presidenta @Claudiashein para atender la crisis de personas desaparecidas, en el que lamentan su desconocimiento… pic.twitter.com/7LcSE3JNYn
— Animal Político (@Pajaropolitico) March 19, 2025
There are more than 100,000 people reported as missing in Mexico, most of whom disappeared in the last two decades. Mexican authorities were involved, or accused of being involved, in many cases of abduction, including the enforced disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero in 2014.
Collectives call for dismissal of CNB chief
The response to Sheinbaum’s plan to strengthen the National Search Commission
The search collectives and relatives of victims said it was “positive” that a decision taken last year to reduce the funding of the CNB has been reversed.
“However, it cannot be expected that the increase in the budget and capacities [of the CNB] will achieve anything effective with a head like Teresa Guadalupe Reyes Sahagún,” the letter said.
The search collectives asserted that Reyes — who became head of the CNB in late 2023 after the resignation of Karla Quintana — has a “clear technical incapacity” to occupy the position she holds. She is a former federal deputy who worked in the Welfare Ministry during the first three years of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s presidency.
The collectives also said that Reyes hasn’t demonstrated an openness to dialogue “with the victims of this country.”
They said that “a forceful action” would be to “correct the mistake” of appointing Reyes to the role of CNB chief and subsequently selecting a new head via an election in which “the right of the families to participate is guaranteed.”
Felipe Calderón-era initiative won’t resolve crisis
The response to Sheinbaum’s legislative reform proposals
The search collectives and relatives of victims said that “reviving the initiative” of former president Felipe Calderón (2006-12) to use a person’s CURP I.D. number as their sole source of identity won’t “immediately resolve the crisis of disappearances.”
Sheinbaum said Monday that a reform to the General Population Law in order to “consolidate” a person’s CURP identity number as their “only source of identity” would allow a missing person’s CURP to be checked against “all administrative records in the country” in order to “generate alerts that facilitate the identification of signs of life.”
The search collectives were also critical of a proposal by Sheinbaum to create new missing persons databases, saying that for the past eight years there has been an “obligation” to create a “National Forensic Data Bank,” but the Federal Attorney General’s Office “has refused to implement” it.
Missing persons problem due to ‘lack of political will to break impunity pacts’
The response to Sheinbaum’s initiative to establish new protocols that allow “immediate” search alerts to be issued
“We reiterate that the problem of disappearances and failures in the search and investigation [procedures in missing person cases] doesn’t come from the absence of laws and protocols but rather the lack of political will to break impunity pacts that persist in the country,” the search collectives and victims’ families said.
They claimed that prosecutor’s offices are “the first obstacle” to commencing searches for missing persons.
The collectives said that the law already stipulates that searches “must be immediate” after a person is reported as missing, contradicting Sheinbaum’s assertion that authorities in some states are required to wait 72 hours before initiating searches and investigations.
‘We are concerned that the crime of disappearance will be made invisible’
The response to Sheinbaum’s plan to put the crime of enforced disappearance on the same level of seriousness as kidnapping
The search collectives and relatives of victims said that one of their “biggest struggles” was establishing “the crime of enforced disappearance” in federal law.
They said that “for a long time,” they “have understood that the search for our relatives responds to different dynamics” than those in a search for victims of kidnapping.
While a kidnapping and an enforced disappearance are similar crimes, the latter occurs with the authorization, support or involvement of authorities. The abduction of a person by a crime group that colludes in one way or another with authorities, whether they are municipal, state or federal authorities, could be classified as an enforced disappearance rather than a kidnapping.
Sheinbaum’s proposal to put enforced disappearance on the same level as kidnapping in terms of seriousness would increase the maximum sentence for a person convicted of the former crime by 20 years to 80 years.
The search collectives and victims’ relatives said that the proposal is “clear proof of not understanding criminal dynamics as well as a clear backward step in terms of investigation.”
“The problem of disappearances can’t be resolved if they are investigated as if they are any crime, and we are concerned that [the crime of] disappearance will be made invisible and its victims dealt with incorrectly,” they said.
“That’s why we strongly reject the proposal.”
‘We hope that this proposal is established’
The response to Sheinbaum’s plan to publish missing persons statistics on a monthly basis
“We hope that this proposal is established, that it allows us to see the level of work of the prosecutor’s offices,” said the search collectives and relatives of victims.
They said that the published data should not just include how many people have disappeared on a monthly and even daily basis, but also show many have been found and how many missing person cases are reaching a court of law. Just 1% of such cases are currently heard by a judge, the search collectives said.
Collectives call for dismissal of heads of victims’ commission
The response to Sheinbaum’s plan to strengthen the Executive Commission for the Attention to Victims
The search collectives and relatives of victims said they hoped that the strengthening of the Executive Commission for the Attention of Victims (CEAV) isn’t just a matter of increasing its budget.
The heads of the commission “must have knowledge of the issue” of kidnapping and enforced disappearances and “sensitivity to attend to victims, not just a personal closeness to those who appoint them,” the letter said.
In light of the alleged nepotism, the search collectives and relatives of victims called for top CEAV officials to be dismissed.
Government ‘hasn’t shown interest in consulting us’
In the conclusion to their scathing letter, the search collectives and relatives of victims asserted that “like all the governments in Mexico,” the current government “hasn’t shown real and serious interest in consulting us and establishing constructive dialogue.”
President Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she would meet with the collectives and family members “if necessary,” but stressed that Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez has been attending to them and will continue to do so.
In their letter, the collectives and relatives also called on government advisers to inform Sheinbaum and other high-ranking officials about “the mechanisms, institutions, procedures and laws that already exist” with regard to missing persons, as the president and other top functionaries have only shown “ignorance on the issue and/or … [the] intention to deceive.”
“… The responsibility to search for and find [missing persons] continues to be yours as a government, and public servants are one of the main obstacles to finding our missing family members,” the letter said.
“If this continues to be tolerated, the problem won’t be solved. Because while the buildings of government are closed and fenced in, the families are looking for our relatives that were disappeared and abandoned by the Mexican state,” it concluded.
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