Mexico City | Desinformémonos. “To dismiss the army’s involvement in 2026 is a crime; it’s a slap in the face to the fathers and mothers of the 43,” said Mario César González Contreras, father of the missing teacher-trainee César Manuel González, following the recent recommendation issued by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to dismiss all reports—prepared by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice (Covaj), and civil society—that point to the Mexican military as responsible for the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students.
Speaking on behalf of the parents of the 43, Mario González Contreras and Hilda Hernández Rivera—both parents of César Manuel—commented on the official document, which, in more than 800 pages, condemned the reports for promoting “a historical untruth” and inciting “sensationalism” with their accusations against the army.
“It’s concerning, because let’s remember that every year there’s a systematic crackdown on the movement. The PRI started it, and they’re doing the same thing now,” added González Contreras during his speech at the “Encounter of Resistance and Rebellion Against the FIFA World Cup” on July 11 at the Casa de los Pueblos Samir Flores Soberanes.
González also denounced “the discrediting” of the parents’ lawyers and the “total disparagement of international experts” by “a person who has no knowledge of the case, simply because they want to curry favor with their superiors and continue to toe the line.”
One day before the meeting, attorney Ángela Buitrago, a former member of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI)—whose report refuted the “historical truth” put forward by the Enrique Peña Nieto administration, which claimed that the 43 young people were murdered and incinerated at the Cocula landfill in Guerrero—told Aristegui Noticias that the CNDH’s recommendation “is full of gaps, inaccuracies, and lies,” and she criticized it for “contradicting” many of its own assertions.
“This is a campaign of persecution by the National Human Rights Commission against international organizations, individuals, and the victims’ representatives—and what they care least about, really, are the victims,” Buitrago stated in the interview.
According to the lawyer and expert, the CNDH “ignores all the technical evidence of the presence of these [military] personnel on the streets of Iguala while the students were there,” as well as “what the judges themselves have stated when ordering the corresponding arrests.”
He also pointed out the contradiction on the part of the CNDH itself in making a “complete about-face” from the recommendation that the institution had issued in 2023, when it directly called for investigating and delving deeper into all issues related to the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) and the Ayotzinapa Case, as well as probing what happened regarding the 27th Battalion, and requested a series of strict recommendations to clearly establish the actions of the National Defense Secretariat.
Finally, Buitrago noted on Aristegui Noticias that the CNDH’s direction under Rosario Ibarra’s leadership “repeats” the strategy of promoting “media campaigns” and smear campaigns, as was the case with Enrique Peña Nieto’s PRI government, and lamented that the institution used its resources to “insult, attack, and offend” those who have investigated the Night of Iguala, rather than standing with the victims and advancing the search for truth and justice.
Despite the CNDH’s latest official stance, the parents of the 43 insisted that they will not relent in their struggle to uncover the whereabouts of their children and find out what happened on September 26, 2014, in Iguala, when they were disappeared.
“No matter how many lies they tell, the truth must be established through scientific evidence, never through deception as they have done. We are still here, with our heads held high. Nothing will intimidate or defeat us in our continued search for them,” said Hilda Hernández Rivera at the Gathering of Resistance and Rebellion.
Original text published by Desinformémonos on July 13th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.