Mexico says only about one-third of 130,000 people listed as ‘disappeared’ can be confirmed as missing.
MEXICO CITY — The goal, say Mexican authorities, was to bring clarity to one of the nation’s most explosive questions: What happened to the more than 130,000 people officially listed as “disappeared”? Their faces are pasted on walls and lampposts across Mexico, and demonstrators regularly hoist banners demanding the return of loved ones whose names are memorialized in chants. Now, a yearlong government study has sparked a contentious new round of debate about the disappeared. The review concludes that the 130,000 number is highly inflated and includes tens of thousands who may be alive — or ended up on the list without having been properly identified in the first place. Other names are probably duplicates, the government says, while some people may have gone off the grid voluntarily for personal reasons. Human rights activists and relatives of the missing quickly denounced the report as a cover-up — the latest attempt to “disappear the disappeared.” “This report is a farce, a joke,” said Raúl Servín, part of a citizens group that searches for the missing in the western …
