It will soon be the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Everything indicates that their parents will not have the longed-for truth and justice. What they will maintain is their trust in the accompaniment and advice of the human rights organizations Tlachinollan, Centro Pro and the social organizations Fundar and Serapaz. They are also supported by the UN and the OAS. These days a very worrisome scenario has arisen, even more so because of the fight against the so-called historical truth that Peña Nieto tried to put in place, a sort of dispute for the truth has materialized, as a result of the report prepared by the President of the Republic, dated July 8. The report was addressed exclusively to the relatives of the 43 disappeared students, not to their advocates, whom he refers to as “supposed human rights defenders and international organizations, such as the OAS and agencies of the US government,” and published in the newspaper La Jornada on July 20, 2009.
The report approaches the Ayotzinapa case from a peculiar political point of view that reiterates various personal suspicions of the head of the federal Executive, both of the national human rights defenders in the country and of foreign entities, such as the OAS. His is an interpretation of a kind of opposition interventionism that at the time materialized in the technical cooperation for the case through the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), in whose prosecution those who formalized the request and approval of such mechanism of assistance are accused of bad faith. But it does not stop there: the document also links the attacks from the DEA and a journalist to accuse, without evidence, the current government and specifically the President of the Republic of having received financing from so-called organized crime groups. This and other elements substantially distance the document from the Ayotzinapa case where the preliminary conclusions of the GIEI and of a significant report of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice (Covaj) point to the intervention and in its case responsibility of the Army, as well as of other levels of government. This led the Covaj to state that they are facing a State crime and the GIEI reports to highlight that 800 pages of Army documents that have not been handed over and are key to the clarification of the case are missing.
The reading of the report with its “I accuse” does not seem to be directed only to the relatives of the disappeared students. It is no coincidence that the second report of Alejandro Encinas, former president of the (Covaj), where he concluded that the Guerreros Unidos gang and agents of various Mexican state institutions were involved in the disappearance of the 43 students. He indicated that the military are a key piece within the board of the perpetrators who witnessed the disappearance of the 43 normalistas; however, they did not prevent it and, even worse, denied it in their statements. They also acted, it was noted, with opacity by denying all the information they kept in the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center that operated in Iguala in 2014. This narrative coincides with the GIEI reports, which are also the subject of malicious accusations.
Here it should be noted that the report, from its beginning and end, presents an unconditional defense of the President of the Republic to the Army, since it considers that there is no evidence linking him. It is important to stop to explain and reiterate that we are dealing with a document of a political nature, alien to the dimension of justice and whose implication, accusations and hypothesis refer partially to the Judicial Power, which has been questioned for some releases it ordered, but not to the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic, which is not touched, but simply left out of the story. Needless to say that the political superimposition and subjugation ignores the rule of law, which should be the guiding principle. It is evident that this virtual supplanting has a strong impact both due to its content and its author, whose power is significant in the case of the President of the Republic.
The relatives of the 43 students have already taken a public position. They distanced themselves from the discourse that places them as opponents and almost enemies of the Army, or allies of foreign interests; our only priority, they say, is to know what happened to our children. They pointed out that they are the victims and recognized that at the beginning of the current government there was a will to reopen the investigation. They highlighted the Army’s bad faith in their version that the infiltrated soldier only wanted to be a teacher and pointed out the official acknowledgement that he received intelligence training and was an informant. Their reiteration of their hope to find truth and justice in the next government is admirable.
Original article by Magdalena Gómez published in La Jornada on July 30, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.