Mexico has 37,000 unidentified bodies (government)

Mexico has 37,000 unidentified bodies registered in forensic services and clandestine graves, the government reported on Thursday.

The country is going through a “forensic emergency situation,” said Alejandro Encinas, Undersecretary of Human Rights, of a crisis linked to the problem of missing persons, of which Mexico counts about 95,000 cases.

Encinas, whose office is attached to the Ministry of the Interior, explained that of the 37,000 bodies some 8,000 had been taken to morgues and “the rest (were) in mass graves”.

One of the main causes of the problem is that “there is no national genetic database” to compare DNA samples taken from relatives of missing persons, with those from unidentified remains.

Last August, a report by the Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico, an organization that brings together some 70 groups of victims' relatives, indicated that there are more than 52,000 unidentified bodies in mass graves and forensic services in the country.

The problem of missing persons in Mexico has worsened since December 2006, when the government of then-President Felipe Calderón launched a controversial offensive against drug trafficking cartels, with the advice of the United States and the active participation of military forces.

Since then, Mexico has accumulated more than 340,000 homicides, most attributed to the actions of criminals.

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