Mexico City, Mexico – Mexican authorities reported finding 24 bodies in a mass grave in Zapopan, Jalisco between December 13, 2024 and January 13, 2025, a grim reminder that Mexico has recorded 116,000 cases of forced disappearance since the 1960s, and Jalisco leads the country with 15,882 disappearances as of October 2024.
While many of these disappearances can be attributed to warring drug cartels, a new study from the Committee for the Analysis of Missing Persons from the University of Guadalajara, sheds more light on the involvement of state officials, including police, in forced disappearances within Jalisco.
“Obviously, there is a pattern of disappearances that exists in all countries and has been around for a long time, where the goal is specifically to hide the body in order to avoid or reduce the chances of investigation. But those, let’s say, are the constant cases. What’s new and significant are those in which the State is involved,” Jorge Ramírez, professor and researcher at the University of Guadalajara and the coordinator of the study, told Aztec Reports.
Organized crime is a main driver of violence and disappearances throughout Mexico. In areas such as Jalisco, where there is a strong presence of powerful cartels like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, there tend to be higher rates of forced disappearances than other parts of the country without as much cartel presence.
However, the study highlights that there are numerous cases of forced disappearances suspected to be carried out by public servants, including the police, which play an outsized role in Jalisco. Jalisco’s Deputy Prosecutor’s Office for Disappeared Persons reported that from 2018 to 2024 there have been 306 public servants prosecuted in forced disappearance cases.
In Mexico, information about forced disappearances is scarce and scattered, according to the researchers. The team evaluated 160 cases of disappeared people in Jalisco from 1996 to 2024, with as many as 313 missing people involved in those cases. According to court information as well as family testimonials, local police were implicated in 85 cases, local prosecutors in 47, federal security forces in eight, state of Jalisco police in two, and in 15 disappearances the perpetrator was unknown.
In some cases, the motive was more apparent. According to researchers, 80 disappearances are related to the June 2020 “halconazo tapatío,” a six-day protest against the beating death of 30-year-old Giovanni López at the hands of police, which sparked outrage and drew comparisons to the protests for George Floyd in the United States.
In other cases, the motives for the disappearance aren’t so clear. Researchers say that reports from the local police tend to be more detailed and provide clues as to why a person may be detained originally, while very few reports from the Prosecutor’s Office “record what could have triggered the deprivation of liberty.” Researchers found that people have gone missing when authorities are called to reports of robbery, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, driving while intoxicated, and other crimes. They also recorded incidents in which people disappeared following phone calls to their family members asking for money to pay off the police.
“Obviously, there is police involvement in protection, but one must ask, who protects the police? Who is involved in protecting those officials at that level? So they can continue acting with impunity. There is no clear answer,” said Ramírez. “There is a pyramid of consent, which, in a report like this, cannot be fully stated.”
