Mexico restarts search for missing, digging for 1970s victim

FILE - In this April 26, 2016 file photo, family members and supporters of 43 missing teachers college students carry pictures of the students as they march to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City. On Sunday, March 24, 2019, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to ramp up efforts to identify thousands of bodies in government custody at forensic institutions across Mexico, while thousands more Mexicans are missing, their bodies presumed to be in clandestine graves. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

The Mexican government is re-launching its search for the country's 40,000 missing people by resuming a decade-old effort to dig for remains of an activist who disappeared in 1974.

There have already been a half-dozen rounds of excavations at old army bases in southern Guerrero state to find the remains of Rosendo Radilla, with no luck so far.

But the government said the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador started more digs for Radilla on Monday.

Radilla disappeared at a military checkpoint during the army's "dirty war" against leftist guerrillas and social movements.

At least 26,000 unidentified bodies have passed through morgues in Mexico in recent years.

On Sunday, Lopez Obrador pledged to spare no expense in finding the missing.