Mexico City, July 22 (RHC)--Mexican authorities have found 1,418 human bodies in 390 clandestine graves according to the research “Study Violence and Terror: Findings about clandestine graves in Mexico.” The study said that between 2009 and 2014, 5,786 remains were found in Mexico.

Based on the report, prepared by the Human Rights Program of the Ibero-American University of Mexico City and the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, the graves were located in 23 of the 32 states.  The study concluded that the clandestine graves are evidence of the human rights crisis in the Latin American country where most perpetrators remain unpunished.

Five Mexican states, namely, Guerrero, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Coahuilam, and Tamaulipas have the highest number of secret graves i.e., 62.66 percent of the total.  The Ministry of the Interior recognizes that more than 37,000 people are registered as disappeared and their whereabouts are unknown since 2006 until the end of 2018.

Last June, the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced a program worth $21 million U$D to identify tens of thousands of human remains.  The money will be destined to standardize the forensic databases in the country and to create five new forensic institutes, among other actions.

The Mexican Undersecretary of Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas, said when presenting the plan that "we must rethink the course (...) that guarantees us the dignified treatment and the identification of the bodies that are at this moment in the forensic services of the country, in mass graves and even in clandestine graves."

According to President Lopez Obrador, the bodies and remains found in the graves are "the worst inheritance left to us by previous governments."