The INEGI counts a total of 14,400 forensic experts nationwide assigned to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and the State Units of Expert Services or Forensic Medical Services in 2024.
The amphitheaters of these centers have a maximum storage capacity for around 15,000 corpses. In addition, of the 937 expert laboratories they have, 699 are not certified.
But last year these units received 100,000 corpses, 5.4% more than in 2023. From that universe, 11,300 correspond only to the State of Mexico.
“The State does not have the capacity to address this phenomenon, or in terms of investigation with the State Prosecutor’s Office, where most of the disappearance crimes are, nor does it have the capacity to give identity to the thousands of people who are as deceased without identifying,” he explains.
“Then you have a phenomenon that continues to rise and a state that does not have an institutional capacity to be able to attend it,” says Ruiz, author of the report Forensic crisis in Mexico: Forensic Budget for Federal Entities.
The FGR also fails with the creation of a National Forensic Data Bank, as ordered by law since 2019, which would facilitate identification work. The Government of Claudia Sheinbaum reformed the laws to improve and systematize the search and identification. Grace Ferńanndez expects the changes to be completed.
She looks for her brother Dan Jeremeel, who was disappeared in 2008 in the state of Coahuila. It is one of many women who have fought for public policies, laws and protocols for the attention and search of missing persons.
“The implementation, which is on the side of the State, has not been consistent with urgency and need,” he says. “Without a national commitment, where all prosecutors, all search commissions, commit to share information, we will hardly find the identity of people,” he insists.
Repercussions on victims
Ruiz mentions that all of the above also contributes to many families of people where the disappearance is not associated with some crime live the same adventures of the disappearance as any other relative who does not find his loved one, because the capacity of the State is exceeded.
The uncoordination between authorities leads to the bodies of people who are sought after in the common graves; It delays the appropriate notifications to the relatives of those who have been located lifeless, and hinder forensic identification.
In some cases, the bodies of people who were identified have also been buried by the prosecutors. And in the worst scenarios, these state agencies and governments have illegally buried unknown corpses without opening a research folder, although some had traces of violence and denigrating treatment.
This happened in Morelos. In 2014, the family of Oliver Wenceslao, kidnapped and killed in 2013, discovered that the State Prosecutor’s Office buried him in a common grave despite being identified. In addition to recovering her body, the mother and aunt promoted a legal struggle to reopen that tetelcingo pit. In 2016, 117 bodies were recovered. Of these, 34 had no research folder. Nine bags were also found with remains of another 12.
(Photo: File)
A year later he began the exhumation of graves in the Cemetery of Jojutla. They add four phases, the last in June of this year, with 85 findings.
