September 26th will mark the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of the 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa. Relatives and companions of the 43 students, civil society organizations and citizens in solidarity with this movement that demands justice and truth, have started a few days ago the commemorations and mobilizations for a tenth anniversary that will be commemorated in a climate of impunity, concealment, uncertainty and disenchantment.
However, amidst the shadows surrounding the Ayotzinapa case and the deep pain that remains among the victims and their families, this tenth anniversary also commemorates a luminous process of dignified resistance sustained both from the normalista tradition and by the families and organizations in struggle to know the whereabouts of the 43 students. It is a struggle that the government in office has tried to divide and one which exposed on an international scale the profound crisis of disappearances in our country, whose count already amounts to more than 115,000 people.
In an effort to recover the last 10 years of this struggle for truth and justice, at least four stages can be distinguished around the case, marked by the different posture patterns and actions-omissions of the State in the face of the inalienable demands of the students’ parents.
The events of that tragic night of September 26, in which 43 students were disappeared, six people were murdered -one with severe signs of torture- and more than 40 people suffered injuries, were quickly made up by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, who tried to close the case with the alleged “historical truth” that the then Attorney General of the Republic, Jesús Murillo Karam, presented in a press conference. Neither the careful manipulation of evidence, nor the torture used to obtain the key statements to build that version of the facts, were enough to stop the search for the whereabouts of the students and the demands for truth, justice and reparation.
The failure of the historical truth, disproved thanks to the tireless work of the parents of the normalistas and the human rights organizations that accompanied the case, led to a second stage that began with the arrival of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI). The group’s exceptional work in this first period allowed substantial progress in the search for the truth, thus conclusively refuting the official version of the government in power and pointing out as responsible, by action or omission, people and institutions of the three levels of government, including those who manipulated evidence at their convenience to fabricate a truth that hindered and slowed down the authentic investigations.
The GIEI was practically expelled from the country, largely due to the dissatisfaction of the armed forces; however, the change of government inaugurated a third stage marked by opportunity. The expectations provoked by the promises made by Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the families of the 43 students, accompanied by the creation of a new institutional scaffolding, opened a new political moment for the Ayotzinapa case. This period eased the tensions of the movement with the State and generated a significant synergy that, although with some stumbles, allowed for the official disproval of the historical truth, the return of the GIEI, the creation of a Truth Commission headed by Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, the continuity of the investigations through the creation of a new specialized prosecutor’s office, and the active participation of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Although the case has made significant progress, such as the arrest of military personnel and the arrest of former Attorney General Murillo Karam, among others, the impenetrable wall that has separated the armed forces from the duty of transparency and accountability in the investigation has marked the fourth and current stage of the case. Different means of evidence, as well as the controversial collaboration of the recently arrested Gildardo López Astudillo, whose protected witness name was Juan, reinforced the need to openly investigate the armed forces, as it confirms that they had knowledge of the facts when they were taking place, observed the facts in a covert manner, had the communications of some of the participants tapped and had infiltration in the movement of the normalistas.
The juncture of the change in the Presidency of the Republic puts us in front of the opportunity to inaugurate a fifth stage, whose concretion will depend on Claudia Sheinbaum calling for the cooperation of the armed forces and resuming the efforts of an effective search for the truth, which will help the establishment of new codes of trust between the parents of the missing students and the State. Regardless of the positions that the incoming government decides to assume, what we can be sure of is that the struggle for justice in the Ayotzinapa case will continue driven by the dignified resistance of the relatives and companions of the 43 normalistas. As citizens, it is up to the State to reiterate that its obligation is to continue with the investigations in an honest and rigorous manner, even if this implies lifting the curtain on the pacts of impunity. Only in this way will we be able to find the whereabouts of the 43 normalistas and of the more than 115,000 missing persons that are still missing.
Original article by Mario Patrón published in La Jornada on September 19th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.