They conclude appearances to integrate a search system consulting body

Andrea Becerril

La Jornada newspaper
Saturday, August 2, 2025, p. 8

With complaints about the impunity that persists around the crime of forced disappearance, the appearance of candidates to integrate the citizen council of the National Personal Search System, ended yesterday in the Senate.

Of 138 applicants, 44 gathered the requirements, but four declined and did not appear to the interviews, so the members of the Government and Human Rights commissions, which are presided over Lilia Margarita Valdez and Reyna Celeste Ascencio, must assess the candidates and define who of those 40 profiles are suitable.

Both commissions, said Senator Valdez, will meet on August 15 to approve the suitability opinion, which will turn to the Political Coordination Board, which must be agreed with the forces represented by the 13 members of the Citizen Council, which will have to be made up of five relatives of victims of forced disappearance, four experts and four members of human rights organizations.

On the subject, Morenista Senator Edith López Hernández stressed that with the experience of the participants and with political will you can do great things to find many lives. He added that senators will be allies in the search for missing persons.

Yesterday was the third and last day of appearances of representatives of civil organizations and specialists, who agreed that justice and non -repetition of this crime that rarely sanctioned, so they proposed changes must be guaranteed.

Activist Teresa Anaís Palacios Pérez considered it necessary to reform the law of forced disappearance in order to prepare functional records against deficiencies in local communications and with the authorities of the common jurisdiction. He also said that it is necessary to assign greater budget to the National Personal Search System.

Meanwhile, Alejandra Maritza Cartagena López, a specialist in the field that works in the state of Jalisco, said that the strengthening of local search commissions with human, economic, material, scientific and technical resources, in addition to going hand in hand with other actions, such as the professionalization of personnel and sensitization is essential.

He explained that Jalisco has more than 15 thousand people missing for lack of a public policy for the prevention of this crime and highlighted the lack of effective coordination between state prosecutors and other search institutions.

María de la Luz Barbosa Mendoza, representative of a civil organization, proposed to create networks in the states to be able to speed up searches, since she as the mother of a missing child knows that it is essential to guide those who seek their loved ones, because when that situation happens, no relative knows what to do.