By Abel Barrera
In memory of Octaviano Gervacio Benítez and Eladio Serafín de Jesús, disappeared June 26, 1974. 50 years of impunity. The Aguas Blancas massacre is still alive in the ongoing struggle of the poor people of Guerrero. The government of the 4T cannot be a partner of the perpetrators.
On June 27, the mothers and fathers of the 43 students forcibly disappeared from the rural teachers’ school in Ayotzinapa made public their position regarding the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s extreme defense of the army. They also expressed their solidarity with the human rights organizations that for the past ten years have had the honor of accompanying and representing them legally, while suffering repeated verbal attacks from the president in his morning press conferences. The dispute has centered on obliging the army to hand over the 800 pages that the mothers and fathers have been demanding from the president since 2023.
In a meeting June 3 in the National Palace, the president said that he delivered all the documentation related to the missing pages, a total of 15. Taking into account the 18 pages that then Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas delivered at the time, included in the addendum of his second report, the total is 33 pages. The president commented that the rest of the pages, which would be 767, have to do with other issues unrelated to the Ayotzinapa case.
This assertion comes from the army and for that reason alone the mothers and fathers do not trust the source, since it is a biased and unilateral position of a party directly involved in the events of September 26 and 27, 2014. How can they trust the word of the army, when it has refused to deliver the information and has hidden the documents it has regarding the disappearance of the 43 students?
The little information that has been obtained in bits and pieces has been due to pressure from the mothers and fathers and the professional and meticulous work of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), which had to rummage through the army’s archives and struggle to follow the threads so that little by little information about the 43 could come out.
On what authority does the army say that the 767 folios are related to other matters? The parents believe that information is being hidden and they demand that the full 800 folios be put on the table. The 18 pages that Undersecretary Encinas handed over contains relevant information that provides an account of events that occurred on the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27. Likewise, in the 15 pages that the president recently handed over, there is a document of utmost importance that the government has tried to minimize.
The document refers to the fact that 14 bodies of young people from Ayotzinapa were found in the Jardines de El Sol neighborhood in Iguala. It also states that the army intercepted some communications and heard some people comment that they had already found the bodies of the students in the lagoon.
This is key information, because it has to do with the whereabouts of the young people. For this reason, the mothers and fathers reiterate their position that the 767 missing documents should be handed over and that an external entity should review them, since they do not trust the government or the army due to all the manipulation that has occurred over the years.
The president reiterated his position that there is no proof that the army participated in the Iguala events. He affirmed that there is not a single proof of military responsibility. The parents of the 43 responded that this is false since there is evidence of military participation before, during and after the disappearance of their sons.
Before the events of Sept. 26th, the army had infiltrated the Ayotzinapa teacher training college with military personnel disguised as students.. They knew how the youth were organized. The reports from these soldiers reached the military commanders and informed them of the mobilization, the number of students who were going, how they were going, and in which buses they were being transported. The army had knowledge of their movements before the disappearance of the youths. They knew what was happening. That is why for the mothers and fathers the president’s affirmation that there is no proof of the army’s participation is neither truthful nor objective.
When the youth arrived in Iguala, military personnel belonging to the Information-Gathering Team (OBIS) were providing data on the departure of the students from the teaching college, their arrival in Iguala, up to their disappearance. Two military personnel from the command center C-4 were tracking the students in real time. There is evidence of this. That same night the army tapped the cellphones of the criminal group Guerreros Unidos and the Iguala municipal police. They listened to conversations of what was happening with the students and where they were being taken.
There is also evidence of a criminal link between the 27th Infantry Battalion and the Guerreros Unidos. Evidence from wiretaps in Chicago are fundamental here, and clearly illustrate that relationship. It was corroborated that they held frequent meetings, that they received money from the criminal group and that the 27th battalion facilitated the transfer of drugs. All of this is in the files that arrived from Chicago.
The parents of the students noted that a protected witness testified in legal hearings and affirmed that 25 students were taken to the 27th infantry battalion and that they were murdered there and handed over to the criminal group Guerreros Unidos.
There is no longer talk of indirect participation, but rather direct participation of the army in the disappearance of the students. However, the prosecutor’s office has decided that this information is not a line of investigation and set aside the witness’s testimony.
The parents cannot be calm when there is a witness who says that 25 of their children were taken to the battalion and killed there. It is a line of investigation that the authorities have to prioritize, because there is witness testimony.It is disheartening for the mothers and fathers to hear the president say that there is no proof of the army’s participation in the disappearance of their children. For them, this government cannot leave office without taking into account that information– it has a duty to investigate and not to close itself off in its circle of power so that the army is never touched.
Another concern of the parents is the information they received on June 3 about the identification of remains being carried out with the mitochondrial method. Under the mitochondrial method, samples are taken only through the maternal lineage, from a single relative. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAFF) states that this method is fallible and not reliable. In the past, an attempt was made to identify Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz, one of the 43 disappeared students, with very questionable results that only resulted in the re-victimization of his relatives.
The work being carried out by the prosecution is not reliable because of the method being used and because the Argentine team of experts trusted by the parents is not involved. By refusing to share these analyses with the Argentine team, the government is not acting transparently. The parents have established a firm position: that results of the mitochondrial method related to the identification of any bone remains will not be accepted, and they ask that the Argentine–formally named as their experts in the file–be included.
The mothers and fathers face a titanic task. Now they have to stand up to the president himself who has sided with the army. Their disappointment is profound since they had placed all their expectations in his government. They trusted in his word–that he would remove all obstacles to find the whereabouts of their 43 children.
Today they see that this possibility is receding. They note that his discourse has changed and so has his treatment of them and their legal representatives. Among the fathers and mothers, their great-heartedness and solidarity stand out. They have made us feel, in the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Center and the Tlachinollan Center, their appreciation and affection. They have listened to the president´s accusations against us in the morning conferences.
Most recently, he has accused us of attending a meeting with then-president Peña Nieto that the parents had no knowledge of. The parents clarified that the only two meetings held were once in Los Pinos and the second one in the Museum of Technology. There were no other meetings. The meetings were made public at the time and there were press conferences to report the issues that were addressed. The parents have requested that the president present proof of a meeting that was supposedly held behind their backs, if he has any. Otherwise, their disappointment will deepen, also fueled by the federal government’s attempt to move forward with the mitochondrial identification method, which is a fallible and does not lead to objective results.
Abel Barrera is the Director of the Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero. This text was originally published in Rompeviento here.
Ed. Note: On July 20, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador released another report on the case. The parents issued a new statement in response (here, in Spanish) The response states in part: “Mr. President, you have lied to us, deceived us and betrayed us… You did not only fail us, but all the Mexican people who naively believed you at one time. You cannot justify the unjustifiable. There are numerous testimonies and police reports that support the fact that the Army was in the streets that day and participated shamefully in the disappearance of our sons that fateful 26th of September 2014. This is an irrefutable truth. It surprises us that you erase the statements of an official of your own cabinet and member of the Truth Commission, Alejandro Encinas Rodriguez, who corroborated the active participation of the Army, as did the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) in the Ayotzinapa case…
Nearly ten years later, we, the mothers and fathers of the 43 Ayotzinapa disappeared students, have not for a single day stopped demanding the safe return of our sons and of the hundreds of thousands of disappeared that unfortunately are also no longer among us. To you we say that history will judge you and will place all of us in the place where we deserve to be, because truth is ALWAYS implacable.”
