Fernando Camacho and Andrea Becerril
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, October 11, 2025, p. 6
In the draft Federal Expenditure Budget (PEF) 2026, a thorough “reengineering” is needed to address the most urgent needs in issues such as the search for missing people, the fight against corruption, transparency or the social reintegration of those who were deprived of their liberty.
This was warned by the participants in an open parliament forum organized yesterday by the Budget Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, who warned that cuts in the funds of various organizations, within the framework of an austerity policy, can weaken the mechanisms in charge of serving the most vulnerable sectors of society.
During the work meeting, Emanuel Jiménez García, of the National Citizen Council of the National Search System (SNB), warned that one of the areas that work with the most shortcomings in matters of missing persons is that of forensic personnel, because there are only about 15 thousand experts in the entire country, which is insufficient to study the more than 72 thousand bodies that remain in the morgues without identifying.
He stressed the importance that in the PEF 2026 project, the subsidies of the National Search Commission (CNB) do not decrease, since the funds of the local commissions in turn depend on it, and that resources are guaranteed to have approved search and investigation protocols.
In the same sense, Virginia Garay, president of the civil association Warriors in Search of Our Treasures, warned that from 2023 to 2024 the number of unidentified bodies in forensic rooms increased by 5.3 percent.
Despite this, the CNB would receive funds for only one million 214 thousand pesos next year, compared to the 23 thousand 493 million pesos for the National Guard.
Likewise, subsidy funds for local commissions to search for missing persons would be reduced by 0.7 percent, which translates into an insufficient amount to locate each of the victims.
Anaid García Tobón, an expert in government and public affairs, warned that the necessary resources to combat corruption are not being guaranteed either, since five of the six government institutions dedicated to this issue are suffering cuts, while the only increase would occur due to the merger between the Judicial Administration Body and the agency that investigates crimes within it.
Even the Secretariat of Anti-Corruption and Good Government itself would suffer a budget drop next year of 2.1 percent, which “compromises its capabilities to comply with the investigation of public servants” allegedly involved in irregularities.
A similar phenomenon occurs with the new government policy of transparency and access to information, through the Transparency for the People organization, which will only receive 25 million pesos to carry out its work, against the one billion pesos per year that the defunct National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) had on average, which implies a 98 percent drop in the resources allocated to that area.
