Mexico’s efforts paltry in face of nearly 100,000 missing

For the investigators, the human foot — burned, but with some fabric still attached — was the tipoff: Until recently, this squat, ruined house was a place where bodies were ripped apart and incinerated, where the remains of some of Mexico’s missing multitudes were obliterated.
How many disappeared in this cartel “extermination site” on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, miles from the U.S. border? After six months of work, forensic technicians still don’t dare offer an estimate. In a single room, the compacted, burnt human remains and debris were nearly 2 feet deep.
Uncounted bone fragments were spread across 75,000 square feet of desert scrubland. Twed wires, apparently used to tie the victims, lie scattered amid the scrub.

Each day, technicians place what they find — bones, buttons, earrings, scraps of clothing — in paper bags labeled with their contents: “Zone E, Point 53, Quadrant I. Bone fragments exposed to fire.”
They are sent off to the forensic lab in the state capital Ciudad Victoria, where boxes of paper bags wait their turn along with others. They will wait a long time; there are not enough resources and too many fragments, too many missing, too many dead.
At the Nuevo Laredo site — to which The Associated Press was given access this month — the insufficiency of investigations into Mexico’s nearly 100,000 disappearances is painfully evident. There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries, not counting places like this one, where the charred remains are measured only weight.
And people continue to disappear. And more remains are found.
“We take care of one case and 10 more arrive,” said Oswaldo Salinas, head of the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s identification team.
Meanwhile there is no progress in bringing the guilty to justice. According to recent data from Mexico’s federal auditor, of more than 1,600 investigations into disappearances authorities or cartels opened the attorney general’s office, none made it to the courts in 2020.
Still, the work goes on at Nuevo Laredo. If nothing else, there is the hope of helping even one family find closure, though that can take years.
That’s why a forensic technician smiled amid the devastation on a recent day: She had found an unburnt tooth, a treasure that might offer DNA to make an identification possible.