Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada, accompanied by the heads of the Secretariat of Citizen Security, the Secretariat of Government, and the Mexico City Attorney General, presented a report entitled “Fewer Crimes, More Arrests: Actions and Results for April 2025 on Security and Peacebuilding in Mexico City.” In this report, the Mexico City government highlighted what it considers “positive” security figures during her administration, such as zero robberies of transport workers, an 88% reduction in kidnappings, a 49% decrease in intentional homicides, and an 87% reduction in robberies of delivery workers.
However, the presentation and report made no mention of the 1,113 missing persons reported in the city from October 5, 2024, to May 17, 2025.
According to data from the National Search Commission (CNB), during Clara Brugada’s administration, an average of five people have disappeared every day. The municipalities with the highest number of missing persons are Iztapalapa, with 135 men and 86 women, followed by Cuauhtémoc (89 men and 57 women), Gustavo A. Madero (81 men and 54 women), and Tlalpan (47 men and 25 women), during the period from October 5, 2025, to April 30, 2025.
Various voices have questioned why the topic of disappearances was not included in the report. A report by the organization Causa en Común indicates that, while there has been a downward trend in intentional homicides in Mexico City during 2024, disappearances increased exponentially. Their data compares 985 murdered people with 1,679 missing people during the same period.
René Gerez López, a researcher at Causa en Común, expressed surprise at the omission of missing persons from the report on security achievements, stating that “it is the only issue we should be talking about.” He warns that the government “must begin to acknowledge the reality of the problem it faces.” He suggests that the homicide figures from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) are no longer sufficient to assess the danger, and that in some cases, the number of disappearances is higher than the number of homicides. This, according to Gerez López, could mean that the figures are being “shifted from one drawer to another” to show a decrease in violence.
Gerez López describes some figures in the government report as “absurd” and points to possible attempts at manipulation. He asserts that disappearance is a crime that “has been used for many years to dilute the figures for intentional homicides” since “it leaves no body” and the victims are unknown. He insists that authorities “must recognize that Mexico City has a significant number of disappearances.”
For René Gerez López, the situation of disappearances in Mexico City and the country is not a “crisis,” since a crisis is temporary. What we are facing, according to him, is a “reality” and a “major problem” that must be addressed. Collectives in Mexico City have also denounced this situation and actions as an “act of vandalism” against the monument to the 43 disappeared from Ayotzinapa.
The complaint reveals a concealment of figures that could be homicides in order to present progress, but it opens a very painful wound for families in the capital.