Mexico focuses on looking for people falsely listed as missing, ignores thousands of disappeared

By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s government is pouring resources into detecting what it suggests are “fake” missing people. It says they are cases reported by political opponents to embarrass the government, or kidnapped people who return home but don’t notify authorities. Yet officials make no significant effort to find actual missing people, angering the families of Mexico’s estimated 113,000 “disappeared.” They are outraged that President Andrés Manuel López has spent almost a year, lots of money and thousands of man hours combing databases to see if a supposedly “missing” person has applied for a loan, paid taxes or gotten a flu shot. But the government hasn’t done even the most elemental search for the tens of thousands who really are missing.