Jalisco law enforcement agencies are facing criticism for not taking the disappearance of women seriously and for acting too slowly when reports of missing persons are filed.
“It’s a theme that no one seems to be talking about,” said Guadalupe Ramos Ponce, coordinator of the state branch of the Latin American Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights.
More than 1,180 women are currently reported as missing in the state of Jalisco.
Ramos told the Informador newspaper that evidence suggests that many cases of women going missing in Jalisco are not linked to their domestic and social situations but to crime.
“We don’t know if the disappearances have to do with human trafficking, prostitution or sexual violence. So it’s up to authorities to investigate.”
The Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalia General) does not appear to have an established procedure of how to conduct an investigation into a missing person. Law enforcement officials say they are limited on how they conduct these kinds of investigations, especially in the case of an adult where there is no proof that a crime has been committed. They are not considered a priority, especially when manpower is limited.
The mandatory wait period of 72 hours before an investigation can begin – to see if a missing person turns up – should be scrapped immediately, said Ramos. “The first 72 hours are vitally important in the search for a missing person.”
Ramos said local authorities should draw up a detailed database of all reported disappearances in the state, to enable cross-referencing that gives clues to how they might be connected.
The Interior Ministry reported recently that more than 26,000 people have gone missing in the past six years. As the government cracked down on drug cartels, violence surged. This number contradicts markedly with the figure of around 5,000 touted by the previous presidential administration of Felipe Calderon.
Neither was the growing number of missing persons in Jalisco acknowledged by Emilio Gonzalez, the previous state governor, said Francisco Macías Medin of the Centro de Justicia para la Paz y el Desarrollo (Cepad). Jalisco is the fourth highest Mexican state in the number of reported disappearances – 2,230 (53 percent of them women).
Macías said the state Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduria General del Estado) put little or no effort into solving cases of missing persons over the past six years but hopes that will be changed now that the agency has been reorganized into the new Fiscalia General under the direction of former state police chief Luis Carlos Najera.