“Cases of disappearance in Chiapas begin to rise drastically in 2021, but 2024 is the year with the highest concentration of cases,” highlights the Mexican Institute of Human Rights and Democracy (IMDHD).
Municipalities with the most disappearances
According to the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons, of the Chiapas municipalities with the most current disappearances, some coincide with the areas where the most violent events have occurred in recent years or where a greater proportion of the population perceives them as unsafe. This is the case of Tapachula, Frontera Comalapa, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, La Concordia, Pantelhó and Chicomuselo, among others.
Between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, during search operations for missing persons, state and federal agents found at least 27 clandestine graves in properties in the municipalities of La Concordia, Palenque, Suchiate and Emiliano Zapata. After the forensic review, it was established that at least 35 people were murdered and buried in these clandestine cemeteries.
One of the most vulnerable groups to disappearances are migrants, who cross from Guatemala to Chiapas between rivers, jungle and mountains. At the end of 2024, relatives of people who tried to cross Mexico to reach the United States reported the multiple disappearances of their loved ones.
According to the Regional Network of Migrant Families, at least four dozen people of different nationalities, including Cubans, Hondurans and Ecuadorians, disappeared after entering Chiapas territory. To date they know nothing about them.
Last week, members of the group denounced that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is not even looking for the migrants who disappeared almost a year ago. They also complained about the obstacles they have encountered during the search for their loved ones.
Given the lack of responses from Mexican authorities, mothers of the disappeared asked the United Nations (UN) Committee against Forced Disappearances to demand the issuance of measures to find out what happened.
(Photo: Isabel Mateos Hinojosa/Cuartoscuro)
The increase in disappearances is worrying
For human rights organizations, the growth in disappearances due to territorial disputes and between criminal groups is worrying.
“(There is) concern about the rise of this phenomenon,” stated the Fray Bartolomé de las Casa Human Rights Center in a report published in 2025.
“This occurs mainly within the framework of the dispute for control of the territory based on armed confrontation between criminal groups that have the protection of local, national and transnational bodies,” he noted.
Criminal violence is mixed with sexist-feminicide, the organization maintained, since the disappearances of women increased almost five times between 2020 and 2025, while those of men are close to quadrupling. They are most frequently disappeared between the ages of 15 and 19. Men, on the other hand, are between 30 and 34 years old.
