The political struggles of the last three weeks in Mexico have once again confirmed the army’s power in the country. Teams of investigators inside and outside the government have denounced the obstacles the military has placed in their work in paradigmatic investigations into human rights abuses over the past 60 years. The National Palace, which finances these investigations, responded by criticizing the experts, avoiding details and pointing to conspiracies.
It is difficult, at least initially, to criticize the efforts of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador government in this matter in these years. Between 2018 and 2021, I established two truth commissions, one for the Ayotzinapa case and another for the crimes committed during the Dirty War. He also promoted the creation of a special unit in the prosecutor’s office for the Ayotzinapa case and the return of a group of independent investigators, the GIEI, to assist in the investigation. The will was there and the victims and their families gave free rein to their optimism in both cases.
The successes were important in these years. As part of the work on the Dirty War, the President of the Commission, Alejandro Encinas, reported yesterday on progress in the presentation of its first report. The discovery of seven bones belonging to a group of people who were retaliated against in 1971 stands out for their alleged proximity to the guerrillas. In the Ayotzinapa case, a controversial case in which they were found, investigative teams managed to find the remains of two of the 43 missing students and arrest key actors. But in the end, the effort failed in both cases because of the army’s inability to unconditionally open its files.
Relatives of those missing in the Dirty War protest in front of army facilities in Chilpancingo (Guerrero) on February 19, 2023. Dassaev Téllez Adame (Cuartoscuro)
When asked by investigators, the army replied that the demands were missing. These are documents from the Dirty War and the Ayotzinapa case, which are important to know what happened, the consequences of the counterinsurgency and the fate of the 43. Investigators have denounced that the military command postponed the necessary documents manipulated and censored to avoid his consultation. But López Obrador, who now insists that the military leadership open the military archives, ultimately accepts his version: everything that exists was given.
The president was bothered by the interpretations that arose from his response that the army did not pay attention to him on extreme issues. He doesn’t obey him. The armed forces commander, López Obrador, has repeatedly insisted that he is the sole commander and that the military listens to him. This creates an indescribable gap: the space between the researchers’ clarifications about the military obstacles and the president’s unassailable refusal.
There is no expert worthy of López Obrador if his investigations uncover military misconduct. It does not matter whether they rely on investigative teams rooted in the government hierarchy, like the Dirty War Commission, or whether they are independent, like the GIEI, which in these years investigated the Ayotzinapa case on behalf of the International Commission. American Commission on Human Rights, dependent on the Organization of American States (OAS). In fact, affiliation with the GIEI only became a cause for criticism for the president after his departure in July and criticism of military opacity.
The level of detail of the investigators’ complaints, which are based on arguments detailed in the reports published in these months, does not matter either. The arguments are ignored and attempts are made to settle the debate with conclusions. “These documents do not exist, the army is cooperating,” said the president indifferently, questioned by researchers’ criticism of the Ministry of Defense, precisely because of the Ayotzinapa case and the Dirty War.
Relatives of the 43 Ayotzinapa students march in Mexico City on September 26.Nayeli Cruz
Conversations between drug traffickers and the police
The first to voice their criticism in these years were the members of the GIEI, an internationally recognized group of experts whose presence in Mexico corresponded to the wishes of the families of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa who disappeared in Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, in September 2014. The GIEI investigated the case in a first phase between 2015 and 2017, also with Enrique Peña Nieto in government (2012-2018). Upon his arrival, López Obrador gave new impetus to the investigation, setting up a truth commission and demanding the return of the GIEI. Its members agreed. From 2019 to mid-2022, the GIEI, the Commission, also chaired by Alejandro Encinas, and the Special Unit of the Prosecutor’s Office investigated the case in parallel.
Of the progress made in these years, both the Commission and the GIEI have highlighted the discovery of two documents in the military archives that recorded the interception of communications of four members of the Iguala criminal network, the perpetrator of the attack on the students. These are two conversations between members of Guerreros Unidos, the core of the criminal network, and the municipal police, one on the same day of the attack, September 26, 2014, and one on October 3. For example, in the first conversation, a police officer and a criminal talk about a group of 17 students, part of the 43 trapped in a cave, and their possible fate.
The content of these conversations proves that the army spied in real time on the exchanges of the criminals who attacked the students. The logical question pointed to the rest of the conversations he was listening to at the time, to the documents recording their contents, and finally to their location. Until his departure in July, the GIEI was dedicated to answering these questions. The group complained that the military commanders’ prevarications, denials and maneuvers had prevented them from receiving a response for the time being. In July they decided to close the proceedings. From then on, criticism of López Obrador intensified.
The Limits of the Counterinsurgency Apparatus
This week, one of the Dirty War Commission’s five working teams, the Mechanism for Historical Clarification (MEH), used the presentation of the Matrix’s first report to publish a document denouncing the army’s obstacles to its work. The MEH’s work is to define the boundaries of the state’s counterinsurgency apparatus between 1965 and 1990. To understand which agents from which security agencies attacked political dissidents, where and how; Calculate the number of murdered, missing and tortured people. determine the geography of oppression; Understand what other crimes the fight against the left included, against which people, etc.
Eugenia Allier (right), MEH representative, at the presentation of “Archivos de la Resistencia”, a remembrance initiative of the Article 19 Dirty War, on June 9 in Mexico City. Galo Cañas Rodríguez (Cuartoscuro)
Therefore, the Army agreed to open its files and cooperate with the Commission and the MEH. And so it happened, until the Army concluded that the MEH was requesting documents that went beyond the commission’s mandate and concluded by serving them. This is the case at best, as the MEH has also denounced that “the military archivists confused and altered the contents of at least nine files” of the required files.
And even more irregularities. “Sedena has cited the protection of personal data, national security, maintaining good relations with other countries and the fact that it can only comply with orders and refuse to review files and documents,” says the MEH. In this sense, Sedena denies documents after 1990, even if they deal with cases from earlier decades, or denies documents containing information about possible perpetrators or military commanders of the time, on the grounds that their permission would have to be obtained beforehand.
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