The 12 police officers involved, 11 of whom were convicted and one who cooperated with the prosecutor’s office, in a picture from 2021. José Martínez (EFE)
A judge from Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico has sentenced 11 police officers to 50 years in prison for murdering 19 people, most of them migrants, in the municipality of Camargo nearly three years ago. The judge also sentenced another agent, an employee of the local prosecutor’s office, to 19 years in prison for abuse of office and crimes against the administration of justice. This closes the first circle of justice in the Camargo case, a milestone in Mexico’s judicial history, where for years there have been indiscriminate attacks on migrants crossing the country in search of the border with the United States.
One circle closes, but others open. After five months, the trial, which is now coming to an end, comes down to the possible involvement of another twelve police officers who were present at the crime scene on the day of the events, according to assisting agent Ismael Vásquez León. So far, the Tamaulipas prosecutor’s office has not announced whether it has requested her arrest or whether it is at least investigating her. He also did not say whether the agents continue to work for the Tamaulipas Secretariat of Public Security.
In any case, the judge’s ruling closes a decade of injustice against the country’s migrant population. The Camargo case, registered in January 2021, occurred ten years after the San Fernando massacre, also in Tamaulipas. Then criminals murdered 72 migrants in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, just a few hundred kilometers south of Camargo. The following year, criminals in the same community disappeared dozens of people, Mexicans and foreigners. Between April and May 2011, at least 193 bodies were found in graves.
In the case of San Fernando, reporters and authorities have pointed out that strife between criminal groups in the area trapped migrant caravans. Aided by the apathy or complicity of authorities, criminals saw strangers as an opportunity or a threat. An opportunity to expand their ranks, a danger if they strengthened their opponents. Therefore many were killed and then thrown into pits. Nobody did anything for months.
The Camargo case is something different. The motive for the attack was never clear. On January 22, 2021, a group of at least 17 migrants, most from Guatemala’s southern mountains, and their guides traveled the dirt roads of the rural area of Camargo, a border town. The intention was to get to the other side. But during one of the violations, they were intercepted by six state police vehicles, two trucks and four tanks from the company’s Special Operations Group (GOPES).
According to the remorseful police officer, there was a shootout in which part of the migrant group was killed. Most were young. They were men and women, all from very humble backgrounds, all hoping to find opportunity in the United States. The public prosecutor’s office demonstrated in the trial that neither the migrants nor their guides, two Mexican citizens, fired at the police. After the first attack, which began without the motive being known, the police commanders, the agent Horacio Rocha Nambo, commander of the GOPES, and Mayra Elizabeth Santillana, coordinator in the State Police area, ordered to finish off the survivors. Then they doused them with gasoline and set them on fire.
It was two years and a few months of investigation and almost a semester of trial. During all this time, Vásquez León was the only police officer who spoke. The others have retained the Omertá and will now spend much of the rest of their lives in prison. In a statement released this evening, the Prosecutor’s Office said: “With this type of action, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Tamaulipas reaffirms its commitment to work in coordination with national and international bodies so as not to allow crimes that threaten life to go unpunished.” Human rights, especially from vulnerable groups such as people in migration situations.”
Subscribe here Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the important information on current events in this country