The trial in the Camargo case has lasted three and a half months, a period full of bureaucracy and formality that has at times revealed the brutal background that preoccupied those present, the murder of 19 people, most of them migrants, at the hands of alleged police In These weeks prosecutors, lawyers and consultants have presented evidence and arguments, trying to prove guilt and innocence. In the end everything stayed the same: the public prosecutor’s office is conducting a serious case against twelve police officers from Tamaulipas because one of them betrayed the others. The judge will announce his verdict this Wednesday.
The expectation is huge. The Camargo case sets the stage for one of the worst massacres in Mexico in recent years. Thanks to the efforts of the Foundation for Justice and the Jesuit Network with Guatemalan Migrants, the victims’ families, most of them from the remote community of Comitancillo in the southern mountains of the Central American country, were able to attend the hearings. Conveniently, the relatives of the murdered and their suspected murderers lived together for weeks before finally getting here.
The testimony of police officer Ismael Vázquez was the main evidence in these months. His statements, which EL PAÍS published a few days before the trial began, paint a different picture than those of his other colleagues, who face prison sentences of up to 69 years. First of all, everyone pointed out that on January 22, 2021, during a patrol, they found burning cars and many dead people in them. But in August of that year, Vázquez changed his statement and said that in reality several of his companions had fired at the cars, killing their occupants and setting their bodies on fire. The migrants and the suspected smugglers who transported them to the border were in the cars.
Everything remains as it was at the beginning, because there is no news about the path marked by the investigation of the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office. The police officer Vázquez confirmed on August 3 before the judge Patricio Lugo what he said two years ago, a statement for which he has received benefits. Thanks to his help, the public prosecutor’s office no longer accuses Vázquez of murder, but only of abuse of office and crimes in the exercise of his office, with minimum sentences of two and four years in prison. If convicted, Vázquez would spend some more time behind bars.
The photo of Ismael Vázquez (bottom right) among those indicted by the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office in February 2021. José Martinez (EFE)
Furthermore, their defenders, divided into five different teams, tried to distort Vázquez’s statement with a double argument. On the one hand, they point out that only he gives this version of events. On the other hand, they claim that the donations they received distorted the content of their statement. The prosecution, led by agent Artemisa de Jesús Castillo, has repeatedly stated that no one could benefit from the witness protection program in this case. Castillo has also pointed out that an enormous amount of evidence supports much of Vázquez’s story.
The prosecutor referred to the testimony of residents of the town, the Piedras Ranch, where police allegedly killed and burned 19 people. It was actually in the municipality of Díaz Ordaz and not in Camargo, as originally stated, several neighbors observed it as a convoy of six police vehicles pursued migrants that day. They also saw or heard how they were shot. Castillo also pointed to telephone expert reports and GPS analysis of at least one of the police vehicles, as well as Tamaulipas police records, to prove that the 12 people were at the crime scene on the day of the murders.
The weight of each individual
The discussion between the parties has also gone through the complex path of asking what weight each of the defendants would have had in the massacre. In his statement, Vázquez accused two of the other eleven police officers of organizing the rest. This is Horacio Rocha Nambo, head of the Special Operations Group (Gopes) contingent of agents patrolling the area that day. Nambo was in operational command, but he was theoretically acting under orders from Mayra Elizabeth Santillana, the state police chief in this region on the Tamaulipas-Texas border.
At least 20 Gopes agents were patrolling that day, along with four state police officers, including Santillana. Vázquez points out that at around 8:30 a.m. they left the Camargo police station, drove to the municipality of Miguel Alemán to fill up with gasoline and from there drove to the rural area that Camargo and Díaz Ordaz share. They did the latter, said Vázquez, “because that’s where the trick is used,” i.e. organized crime groups. Vázquez says Nambo’s tanker truck was in front. He says that he suddenly heard signs of Nambo and his companions on the radio. Apparently they had seen armed people. Nambo’s car accelerated and so did Santillana’s, who was behind.
Due to the dust on the road, Vázquez’s tank and two others were lost for a few minutes. Shots could be heard on the radio. According to Vázquez, at least one of the defendants, Héctor Alfaro, was in Nambo’s truck. Santillana was also in second place with his driver Jorge Alfredo Castillo. In third place was another state police pickup truck. Vázquez says they arrived where the others were after a few minutes. The people in Nambo’s truck shot, his companions in his tank got out and started shooting, including the people in the tank behind.
One of the vehicles used by the Tamaulipas-Gopes, captured by a surveillance camera on January 22, 2021. Courtesy
This part of Vázquez’s statement is crucial for the prosecution, which told the judge that the defendant acted in “co-authorship”, a situation that required a “common plan”, the presence of a “segmented contribution” from the police , “A plan agreed at the time and updated by radio.” Some of the defense team has objected to the hypothesis because, in their view, it does not make it clear who did what. Some have even pointed out that there is no evidence that their customers were there that day.
The victims’ counselors and the remorseful police officer have denied these arguments. Perhaps the most explicit was Vázquez’s lawyer, Xóchil del Carmen Sánchez, who said this Monday: “That day they forgot that they were police officers. His lawyers also ignored it. Do they not know this or do they ignore the criminal code? The law is clear, behavior can be action or inaction. The results could have been avoided by any of the defendants. “None of them did.”
Because
In her closing statement last week, the lawyer Sánchez herself asked a series of questions that summarized unresolved concerns during the trial. “The police chased their vehicles and shot at a van full of migrants, but they never attacked them. By mistake, by fear, by evil, I don’t know.” That’s one of the questions that hasn’t been answered: the reason why they did it.
It was difficult for it to happen. Despite the evidence presented by the prosecution, none of the defendants except Vázquez admit that they were even at the crime scene on the day of the massacre. Outside of Vázquez’s version, exploring the reason for what happened became almost a chimera, as it ultimately turned out. The repentant policeman has portrayed himself as a puppet, repeatedly created on the orders of Nambo, whom he accuses of organizing the massacre and burning the victims’ bodies. Then the doll became aware and decided to speak, a decision as bold as it was strange. Mexico is hardly getting used to the figure of the protected witness and there are not many cases.
The trial ends without knowing why, one of the families’ hopes before the trial began. During a trip to Comitancillo in May, this newspaper interviewed relatives of some of the victims. The demand was clear. Álvaro Miranda, father of 19-year-old Ósman, said that “the only thing” he wanted to know was “why.” As for the coyote, he pointed out whether it was the fault of the person carrying it, that it was the trafficker, or that it was a confusion on the part of Mexican authorities. “But you don’t know, you don’t know,” he said. Nothing changed about that.
Álvaro Miranda, father of Ósman Neftaly Miranda, on May 16 in Guatemala. Rodrigo Oropeza
Another doubt that the process leaves behind, if possible even worse, points to the rest of the participants. Since his first remorseful statement, Vázquez has stated that there were 24 police officers in the convoy that day, but only 12 defendants showed up for the trial. Other evidence presented by the prosecution also points to the involvement of a total of six trucks, compared to the four indicated by Santillana, the author of the report on the incident that has been described as false. What about the other 12 police officers Vázquez mentions, all by name or nickname? What about the Gopes and State Police commanders who are directly superior to Nambo and Santillana? The public prosecutor’s office remains silent for the time being.
Conviction is still pending in the Camargo case. A conviction is expected, a decision that does not do justice. The current impunity of the rest of those involved sheds light on other impunity, particularly that affecting the National Migration Institute. One of the two vans in which the migrants were traveling was confiscated months earlier during a raid on the institute in Nuevo León. Somehow, within a few weeks, the truck found its way to the coyotes. Currently, there is not a single official of the institute against whom a criminal case has been initiated in this matter.
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