InSight Crime: Does Mexico's Most Wanted Criminals List Even Exist? James Bargent - InSight Crime
go to original November 8, 2013

The list of Mexico's 122 most wanted criminals cited by the president does not exist, according to state institutions, reviving long standing questions about transparency in Mexico's drug war.

In August, President Enrique Peña Nieto told the National Public Security Council that during his administration authorities had captured 62 people from its list of 122 most wanted criminals. At the start of September, as he presented his first government review, he commented that they had captured 65 of the 122.

The government has never released the names of the 122, or of those captured off the list, a policy Mexico's Interior Ministry has said is designed to prevent the suspects "eluding justice," reported Animal Politico.

However, when Animal Politico consulted five state institutions that should be privy to the information, four said they did not have the capacity to process the request, while one, the same Interior Ministry, said that after an "exhaustive search of files" it concluded that such a list does not exist.

InSight Crime Analysis

One of the key differences between the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto and his predecessor Felipe Calderon has been their approach to drug cartel kingpins.

Calderon not only placed emphasis on "decapitation" strategies - targeting the cartel leadership in the belief that the organizations will fail without their heads - he also played on the media spectacle of high profile arrests, happy to parade fallen drug bosses in front of the press and trumpet his government's successes.

In contrast, Peña Nieto has argued that prioritizing violence reduction over top level arrests is a more effective way of tackling Mexico's security problems, while he has implemented more low key media policies to lower the potential for dramatization and even glamorization of the drug war.

The government's policy of not releasing the names of its most wanted criminals could be viewed in the context of this policy, as not publishing the list reduces the hype around such characters and publicity over their activities.

However, the fact that Peña Nieto has repeatedly referred to the list while state institutions deny it exists also raises troubling questions over transparency. This is especially a concern given the authoritarian past of the president's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and recent issues over whether the government manipulates information to present a distorting picture of its security successes.

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