FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2012 file photo, a member of a caravan of Central American mothers hold a photograph of her disappeared child during a Mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The sign reads in Spanish "Looking for Denis Mauricio Jimenes Bautista." A new Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013 calls Mexico’s anti-drug offensive “disastrous” and cites 249 cases of disappearances, about 149 of which include evidence of being carried out by the military or law enforcement. The report says the forced disappearances follow a pattern in which security forces detain people without warrants at check-points, homes, workplaces or in public. Human Rights Watch criticizes former President Felipe Calderon for ignoring the problem, calling it “the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades.” (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, file)
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FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2012 file photo, a member of a caravan of Central American mothers hold a photograph of her disappeared child during a Mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The sign reads in Spanish "Looking for Denis Mauricio Jimenes Bautista." A new Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013 calls Mexico’s anti-drug offensive “disastrous” and cites 249 cases of disappearances, about 149 of which include evidence of being carried out by the military or law enforcement. The report says the forced disappearances follow a pattern in which security forces detain people without warrants at check-points, homes, workplaces or in public. Human Rights Watch criticizes former President Felipe Calderon for ignoring the problem, calling it “the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades.” (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, file)
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FILE - In this May 9, 2012 file photo, people hold photographs of their relatives who went missing during a protest that is part of the campaign "March of National Dignity. Mothers searching their sons and justice" held at the Revolution Monument in Mexico City. A new report by a civic participation group has put a number for the first time on the human toll of all the violence: 20,851 people disappeared over the past six years, although not every case on the list may be related to the drug war. With at least another 70,000 people having died in drug violence, the numbers point to a brutal episode in Mexico that ranks among Latin America's deadliest in decades. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini, File)
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FILE - In this May 10, 2012, file photo, a banner shows ink drawings of missing people at the National March for Dignity on the day Mexicans celebrate el Dia de La Madre, or Mother's Day, in Mexico City. Propuesta Civica, or Civic Proposal, a civic organization released on its website on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012, a database, allegedly collected by the federal Attorney General's Office, it says contains official information on more than 20,000 people who have disappeared in Mexico over the past six years. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini, file)
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FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2013, file photo, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon delivers a speech during a ceremony in Mexico City. Mexico's president is making one last attempt to get the "United States" out of Mexico - at least as far as the country's name is concerned. The name "United Mexican States," or "Estados Unidos Mexicanos," was adopted in 1824 after independence from Spain in imitation of Mexico's democratic northern neighbor, but it is rarely used except on official documents, money and other government material. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini, File)
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Nuevo Leon state police stand guard on a dirt road leading to a ranch near the town of Mina, in northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies were found in a well near this ranch on Sunday near the site where 20 people went missing late last week, including members of a Colombian-style band, according to a state forensic official. Officials could not confirm whether the bodies belonged to 16 members of the band Kombo Kolombia and their crew, who were reported missing late last week after playing a private show in a bar in the neighboring town of Hidalgo north of Monterrey. (AP Photo/Emilio Vazquez)
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CORRECTS BYLINE TYPO TO VAZQUEZ.- Nuevo Leon state police stand guard on a dirt road leading to a ranch near the town of Mina, northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies were found in a well near this ranch on Sunday near the site where 20 people went missing late last week, including members of a Colombian-style band, according to a state forensic official. Officials could not confirm whether the bodies belonged to 16 members of the band Kombo Kolombia and their crew, who were reported missing late last week after playing a private show in a bar in the neighboring town of Hidalgo north of Monterrey. (AP Photo/Emilio Vazquez)
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Mexico's President Felipe Calderon delivers his state-of-the-nation address to Congress in Mexico City, Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. Calderon delivered his final state-of-the-nation speech on Monday, trying to cement his legacy as the president who stabilized the economy and took on the country's entrenched organized crime groups, putting Mexico on the road to rule of law. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)
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Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, left, delivers his state-of-the-nation address to Congress as a live image of him is projected on a screen at right in Mexico City, Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. Calderon delivered his final state-of-the-nation speech on Monday, trying to cement his legacy as the president who stabilized the economy and took on the country's entrenched organized crime groups, putting Mexico on the road to rule of law. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)
Mexico says 26,121 missing during drug war
MEXICO CITY (
AP) — An official count shows at least 26,121 people were reported missing during the term of President Felipe Calderon, who launched the country's offensive against drug cartels,
Mexico's new administration said Tuesday.
Lia Limon, the Interior Department's subsecretary for human rights, said the list used data from local prosecutors across Mexico, and includes people reported missing for any reason during the previous administration. It doesn't include information collected after November 2012.
The list has been a subject of controversy in Mexico for weeks. After Limon said last week that some 27,000 were missing, a member of Calderon's administration disputed the figure, saying the only registry on disappeared people contains 5,319 names. Limon said the government would work to compare the official list with others assembled by government agencies and rights groups.
The government will also work to clarify who on the list may have been a victim of crime, and who may have gone missing for reasons like migration to the United States, a family dispute or a natural disaster.
"We have to be clear that this database doesn't prejudge the reasons that people can't be found, because many of the people on it could be missing for a variety of reasons that don't have to do with criminal acts," Limon said.
She said some sort of investigation had been opened in 20,915 of the cases, but she offered no details.
The Interior Department has granted some public access to the list, but those seeking information must enter a person's name in order to obtain any data.
The civil society group Propuesta Civica recently published a database it said was created by the federal attorney-general's office that contained 20,582. Days earlier, The Washington Post published a story that said it had been given a copy of the database that contained more than 25,000 names.
The organization Human Rights Watch said last week that it had documented 249 cases of disappearances since December 2006, 149 of which showed evidence of having taken place at the hands of security forces.
Searches of some of the names in the rights group's report showed that they did not appear in the new government database.
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Follow Eduardo Castillo on Twitter at — http://twitter.com/EECastilloAP
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Online: www.secretariadoejecutivosnsp.gob.mx/es/SecretariadoEjecutivo/Sistema_RNPED
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