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Mexico, a country of anonymous deaths

After hundreds of mass graves have been found all over the country, Mexico can't stand the government's insensibility any longer

Mothers and wives travel all over the country in search of graves, in hopes of finding their loved ones – Photo: File Photo /EL UNIVERSAL
23/09/2018 |08:49
Redacción El Universal
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After the last two presidencies and their bloody fights against organized crime, and hundreds of thousands deaths and disappearances , Mexico has turned into a clandestine graveyard.

This is something that gives you goosebumps and great sadness, frustration and anger, as large areas of the country have turned in anonymous bodies, victims, or executioners' deposits of a war that has left the country in mourning.

In 2011, in what was then considered as one of the most macabre findings, 195 immigrants were found in 45 graves, in San Fernando, Tamaulipas . Later, according to the PGR, between October 2014 and November 2015, 124 mass graves were found in Iguala, Guerrero , with 158 bodies.

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Since then, the terrible situation would repeat itself on many occasions in the incoming years, outlining the size of the massacre and exposing the criminals and the authorities' modus operandi.

On September 6, the most recent clandestine mass grave was found, it was discovered in Veracruz , with over 166 human remains; one of the biggest mass graves found until now.

And in between this tragedy , which hasn't, surely and sadly, been fully uncovered, institutional chaos reigns, as it's not even possible to learn the exact number of bodies in all those graves , but only a hint of the magnitude of the of this massacre that wounds the country every day: the federal government doesn't have an answer to the following question: how many bodies are decomposing under the Mexican territory? The same happens with the number of disappearances, there is no national database that is trustworthy and allows information comparison and collaboration between institutions.

This is an outrageous event, because of the irresponsibility and insensibility it shows. And the same happens with local governments, which have very different numbers from the ones from the federal authorities, and many time opaque, they seem to have no intention to contribute to ending with something that has obviously turned into a humanitarian crisis and the events are even, as in the case of Javier Duarte's Veracruz , covered or lack information by the local governments.

Therefore, the coordination that should exist between state and federal authorities is nothing more than ink on paper. And in the face of this void, the families of the missing persons are the ones who, driven by their pain, have created searching networks to find their loved ones. Mexico can't stand the government's insensibility any longer.

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