More than 5,600 mass graves have been found in Mexico since 2007, and there are more than 72,000 unidentified bodies in the country’s morgues, while 127,000 people are reported missing. Yet the state denies that disappearance is a systematic and widespread crime and stigmatises those who denounce it, Mexican activist and security researcher Lisa Sánchez told openDemocracy.
Enforced disappearance is not new in Mexico. But it has been normalised in part by the violence triggered by the militarisation of the ‘war on drugs’ – formally launched under the government of the right-wing National Action Party’s (PAN) Felipe Calderón between 2006 and 2012, and intensified by his successors.
The crime now has an impunity rate of 99%, explained Sánchez, the director general of Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD), a civil society organisation working on citizen security, justice and drug policy, in an interview held as the national and international conversation around Mexico’s disappearances intensified.
