Deceased Persons Identified Not Returned, Mexico, 2005–2026 [ANONYMISED DATASET]

This dataset compiles 1,405 cases of deceased persons in Mexico who were identified but not returned to their families; the legal category under Mexican law is Identified Deceased Persons Not Claimed. All of them were recovered as unidentified and were subsequently identified by forensic services through fingerprint comparison against the records of the National Electoral Institute (INE). Because this type of identification is completed within the State, the family must afterwards be located in order to be notified. The information was extracted from family-tracing bulletins (fichas de búsqueda de familia) published on open institutional platforms by the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences, the Directorate of Expert and Forensic Sciences Services of Chihuahua, and the state prosecutor's offices of Mexico City, Colima, Guanajuato, Morelos, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Sinaloa and Veracruz. The data cut-off is 21 July 2026. Institutions sometimes withdraw records once families come forward and sometimes leave them posted, so the presence of a record indicates nothing either way, and none reports which of these persons have already been restored to their relatives.

Each record contains up to 30 variables covering the state and municipality of finding, year of admission to the forensic service, state of birth, year of birth, age, sex, physical description (build, height, hair, skin, dentition, facial hair, eyes) and state of electoral domicile. Entries correspond to admissions to forensic services registered between 2005 and 2026. Following the requirements of the CSIC Ethics Committee, all directly and indirectly identifying fields were suppressed and marked as ANONIMIZADO (ANONYMISED): names, CURP, full dates, municipality of birth and of electoral domicile, address of finding, case file numbers, and individualising marks such as scars, tattoos, clothing and personal effects. Dates are published at year level only, as full dates are quasi-identifiers, and absent values are marked S/D. An accompanying glossary documents all markers, variables and methodological decisions. The dataset was assembled to systematise patterns of disappearance that remain largely unexamined, under Work Package 2, Objective 1 of the TRACETHEM project (Tracing the Lost: Understanding and Addressing Disappearances in Contemporary Mexico), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action hosted at ILLA-CSIC, GA 101202107, February 2026 to January 2028. It supports the analysis of demographic profiles, geographic mobility between state of birth, place of residence and place of finding, and the differences between state institutions in the publication of forensic information.

• From 2026-06-24 to 2026-07-21

Recommended citation : Martínez Castillo, Gabriela; López de León, Daniela; 2026; Deceased Persons Identified Not Returned, Mexico, 2005–2026 [ANONYMISED DATASET]; DIGITAL.CSIC; http://doi.org/10.20350/DIGITALCSIC/29048