The government is politically accelerating the investigation into the Ayotzinapa case and is trying to complete the investigation with some dignity. Results in recent months have been poor, apart from minimal progress in the case against some detainees. Meanwhile, the National Palace insists on prioritizing searches. As President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said this week, the most important thing is to find out the boys’ whereabouts. For now, the discovery of the 43’s remains would be the only thing that could change a difficult situation for the president facing the students’ families.
This Wednesday, López Obrador received the families of the missing normal school students to try to bring the positions closer together. A handful of military espionage documents critical to the families advancing the case have created a distance from the president that currently appears unbridgeable. Thanks to those present, EL PAÍS was able to reconstruct the tone and content of this meeting. It was a sometimes tough meeting that was on the verge of collapse when the families insisted on handing over these documents. “I am not Peña Nieto!” the president even exclaimed, “I am not covering up.”
Relatives of the 43 young normalists leave the National Palace on September 20th. Isaac Esquivel (EFE)
The meeting began on Tuesday. The families of the 43 attended a meeting with Alejandro Encinas, the undersecretary of state for human rights and head of the Presidential Commission on the Ayotzinapa case, one of the teams currently investigating the matter. At the meeting, Encinas spent several hours explaining the contents of the commission’s second report. “It is a more professional work that gives a good overview of the entire process, including the facts and some of the historical truth,” says one of those present.
Encinas left out the most controversial part of the first report, the package of more than 400 messages linking members of the Iguala criminal network, the site of the attack, allegedly during and after the attack, between September 26, 2014 and the following days and weeks , had exchanged. The messages, actually photos of the cell phone screens on which they were supposedly received, outlined the Normalists’ ultimate fate. For example, in one of the cases it was stated that the then commander of one of the two battalions of the Iguala Army, José Rodríguez, had ordered the killing of a group of the 43 people who had been held captive for days since the attack.
The impossibility of verifying the accuracy of the messages forced the commission to discard them. Encinas and his team, like the group of independent experts that investigated the case until last July, the GIEI, have always criticized the massive cover-up carried out by the previous government led by Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). The attempt by the old prosecutor’s office, led by Jesús Murillo Karam, currently in prison, and his right-hand man on the scene, Tomás Zerón, to quickly close the case caused damage to the investigation that was difficult to repair. To this day, it is still unknown what happened during much of the attack.
Some of the messages submitted as evidence in the Commission’s report of September 30, 2022.El País
The theory of the Commission at this point, Encinas emphasized at the meeting, is that the criminal group Guerreros Unidos, supported by the action of the Municipal Police of Iguala and other municipalities, and the action or inaction of other security forces, such as the Prosecutor’s Office, the Federal Police or the army divided the 43 missing students into groups and hid their bodies in different locations in central Guerrero state. The question is where and whether, given the scandal that arose at that time, the criminals moved the remains one or more times.
The families listened attentively and at the end mentioned their great interest in the documents documenting the army’s espionage activity against Guerreros Unidos and its allies at the time, which was practically not mentioned in the report. For them this point is crucial. So far, two of these documents are known, containing conversations between criminals and authorities in which they mention the possible fate of the students. Based on the GIEI investigation, the families assume that there are other documents of this kind and that the espionage had to continue, not through clues that came across this exchange of messages by chance.
In this assertion, Encinas, who holds different positions in the army than López Obrador, agreed with the families. He understood that it mattered and was empathetic. The Commission President’s understanding of this claim has so far had no effect on López Obrador.
The meeting with the president
The families arrived at the National Palace on Wednesday. Encinas presented the report again, albeit more briefly. Later, the special prosecutor in the case, Rosendo Gómez Piedra, spoke briefly about the status of some of the allegations they have been working on recently. The parents’ criticism there referred to the case of General Rafael Hernández. Prosecutors, then commander of the other battalion operating in Iguala, accused Hernández of organized crime because of his alleged collaboration with Guerreros Unidos.
The families criticized the general’s ability to get the judge to change the precautionary measure against them. Hernández will face the trial in freedom thanks to a National Guard report indicating he is not a risk of flight. The judge sent the general home. The families criticize this decision and demand accountability from Gómez Piedra, since they also fear that the rest of the soldiers involved in the case, about fifteen, including General José Rodríguez, would receive similar benefits.
Mr. Mario César González, father of one of the 43 young people, speaks as he leaves the meeting at the National Palace this Wednesday. Isaac Esquivel (EFE)
The situation began to become tense when families spoke up and demanded the president hand over the requested documents. As he said at a press conference on Thursday, López Obrador pointed out that everything had already been delivered and suggested that behind the idea that the Defense Ministry was hiding information there could be an interest in manipulating it.
The families were angry. The President asked them to read carefully the information that had been given to them regarding the Encinas report, and the families responded that they had read and that they would not be manipulated. The tone of the meeting escalated to the point that López Obrador, always cautious in his criticism of the PRI, exclaimed that he was no Peña Nieto and was not covering for anyone. The fathers and mothers of the 43 responded that he was not covering it up, but the army was.
Relatives of the missing and students of the Ayotzinapa Normal School demonstrate this Thursday in front of the Military Field 1. Isaac Esquivel (EFE)
There was no room for improvement. The families then created a document summarizing their requests for the documents, the “Cerfis,” as they call them, in reference to the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center, Central Region, which was then operating in Iguala. The documents are then part of the bureaucracy that this organization creates. López Obrador didn’t like that the mothers and fathers wanted to turn the meeting into an exchange and angrily stated that he would respond to them in writing the next day.
Through the intervention of other people present, the situation was calmed down. At that time, the president suggested that they return on Monday. Encinas himself would receive them together with the Minister of Security and Citizen Protection, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the Minister of the Interior, Luisa María Alcalde, and the Prosecutor Gómez Piedra. The plan is to buy time, although it’s unclear why. Families have a very clear list of missing documents. The President has said that everything is being checked, but at the same time he points out that everything has been delivered. Monday’s meeting will determine the future of the relationship and the case.
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