Gilberto López y Rivas studies the forms and modes of counterinsurgency in the terrritories of the EZLN and Mexican southeast, finding its roots in the predominantly U.S. strategies that have devastated populations across the globe for over 100 years.
Following the report last month from the Commission for Access to Truth and Justice in the Ayotzinapa case, the arrest of former Attorney General Murillo Karam, and the arrest warrants issued for dozens of military personnel, the parents of the 43 disappeared students are witnessing backtracking from positions of power, in particular the protection of the military. The victims’ families demand to know why.
Under the current government of the so-called “Fourth Transformation” (4T), the south of Mexico has witnessed the ongoing pillage and plunder of its natural resources, a humanitarian crisis of migrants and refugees, an explosion of violence, organized crime and paramilitary activity, in tandem with the forced displacement and criminalization of individuals and collectives in resistance. In response to this catastrophic panorama, the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Oaxacan Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), together with other collectives in Mexico and abroad, announces the “International Caravan and Encounter The South Resists”, to be held from April 25th to May 7th .
Luis Hernandez Navarro raises some red flags, about the ease with which the military continues to evade the Ayotzinapa case, despite the fact that it “not only did nothing to prevent it and falsified what happened, but also murdered and disappeared some of the 43 youths.”
Tomorrow, September 26th, 2022 marks the 8-year anniversary of the barbaric mass-disappeance and murder of 43 normalistas (student teachers) who were traveling to Mexico City from their school in Iguala, Guerrero. Though the crime was dismissed by the previous administration as a tragic incident perpetrated by the drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, just over a month ago, the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice published a report indicating that the whole event was a “crime of the state.”
Article translated from Luis Hernández Navarro, in La Jornada.
