By Joss Kelly
On September 26th 2014, 43 students from the Rural Teachers College in Ayotzinapa – a town in Guerrero, Mexico – vanished.
On their way to participate in a demonstration commemorating the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City, the Ayotzinapa students commandeered buses for transport. At 9.30pm, the five buses of students left the bus station in the city of Iguala and shortly after were attacked by municipal police and other – unknown – gunmen. In the attack of the unarmed normalista students, six people were murdered, over forty wounded and 43 – who were taken in municipal police cars – were forcibly ‘disappeared’.
The Historic Truth
The state’s official position is that the students were intercepted by municipal police on the orders of Guerrero’s mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who feared that the students were headed to Pineda’s political rally (Abarca and Pineda, as “probable masterminds”, were later charged).
The 43 students were then handed over to the Guerrero Unidos who ‘assumed’ that they were a rival gang. The state holds that, on this assumption, the Guerrero Unidos murdered the students and burned their bodies in a garbage dump in Cocula, Guerrero.
Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam gave a press conference on the 27th January 2015, in an attempt to offer the official story as the absolute truth and to thus close the case of the missing 43. Murillo put forth that:
“Without a doubt (the investigations lead) to the conclusion that the student teachers were deprived of liberty, deprived of life, incinerated and thrown into the San Juan River. In that order.
“This is the historic truth of the events, based on evidence provided by science, as is shown in the legal file, and it has allowed exercise of criminal action against the 99 involved who have so far been arrested.”
(Source)
“Tell us the truth about what you find, even though it hurts, make sure it’s the truth.”
– Families of the 43 disappeared students
Following criticism about the insensitivity (see Murillo’s comment, ‘I am tired now’, a phrase that came to represent the state’s attitude to the case) and inherent dishonesty of this press conference, Murillo then resigned. Murillo’s speech is a fictitious ‘narrative’: a ‘rhetorical burying’ of the students.
According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW), the disappearance of the 43 students is one of the worst human rights crises in Mexico in recent times. A group of five experts named by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (GIEI for its Spanish initials) produced a report into the Ayotzinapa case, citing ‘numerous flaws, contradictions and omissions in the government investigations and conclusions’.
The report devastated the official story, arguing that “…we have arrived at the conviction that the 43 students were not incinerated in the Cocula town dump. The confessions of the alleged perpetrators on this point do not correspond to the reality of the evidence presented in this study.”
Laura Carlsen catalogues state failures in the case, citing:
“Ballistics tests that were never performed, destroyed and “lost” evidence including surveillance videos and police recordings of the moment of the attacks, bungled autopsies, witnesses who can’t get their stories straight, armed forces who consider themselves above the law and refuse to be questioned, inexplicable cruelty in letting victims bleed out without medical attention, and a host of other acts so systematically inept that incompetency is no longer a viable excuse and a clear pattern of suppression of truth emerges.”
(Source)
With the highest of authorities involved in this pattern of suppression, the case no longer is about truth-seeking but damage control.
“It is the state who ‘disappears’ community leaders and activists”
The involvement of the army and the state’s refusal to interrogate the 27th Infantry Battalion of Iguala requires further attention. HRW questions the extent to which “state and federal authorities failed to intervene to protect the students, despite local human rights activists having alerted the state government while the incident was in progress, and that the buses had been stopped 100 meters from a military installation.”
Omar García, an Ayotzinapa normalista, says there is evidence to suggest that a mobile phone of one the disappeared students was used inside the military base. García holds that, “the army has been linked to organised crime groups … they knew what was going on. They didn’t take them, but they enabled it to happen.” He added: “Our history shows us that it is the state who ‘disappears’ community leaders and activists”. (Source)
To this, we must note the absence of the fifth bus that the students were travelling in. In real life and in case files, this bus has also vanished. Due to the ferocity and complexity of these attacks, the GIEI is led to believe that the vanished bus commandeered by the students was potentially carrying a major heroin shipment destined for the USA.
John Gibler argues that this “would be a searing indictment of both Mexico and the United States’ so-called war on drugs” as it was the “state and federal police all acting in coordination and with military intelligence” who were called to retrieve the narcotics. (Source)
(Laura Carlsen comments on the involvement of the USA on this issue, here, maintaining that US money trains and equips “the same security forces that murder, traffic, extort and rape.”)
Fountains in Ayotzinapa run red on year anniversary to commemorate students. (Source)
Thousands will yell, “They were taken alive; We want them back alive.”
Even if this hypothesis were not correct, Mexico retains a climate of corruption and impunity that extends through all tiers of its establishment. Since the beginning of the drugs war, 100,000 are dead and over 25,000 are missing in Mexico – the state seems to have entirely merged with the system of the cartel, producing a toxic structure of narco-political violence.
The poorest of communities and the indigenous population are being persecuted as they stand between the Mexican establishment and Mexico’s rich supply of natural resources. Guerrero is the second poorest and most violent state in the country. See The Monster in the Mountains
The Ayotzinapa Normal School is one of sixteen left-wing training colleges in Mexico – an actively political and non-conformist sector with a rich background in dissent. The schools contribute to the much needed “awakening of an exploited people” (source).
Vidulfo Rosales, human rights activist and lawyer for the Ayotzinapa families describes the violations within the state of Guerrero, arguing that, “the whole governmental apparatus in the state of Guerrero is the body that commits the most serious human rights violations. On the other hand, it’s the private industries that are also coming in to extract the natural resources, but with the collusion and the support of the authorities. The authorities are the ones that allow, by way of laws and concessions, the private companies to come in in the first place” (source).
We see continued patterns of state violence and impunity surrounding the vulnerable populations. It is a forceful eviction from a ‘gold mine’ of natural resources: the attack on the 43 students is systematic political repression.
Mass Protests for the 43 Students (Source)
“Your struggle is a crack in the wall of the system. Don’t allow Ayotzinapa to close up. Your children breathe through that crack, but so do the thousands of others who have disappeared across the world.” (Source)
Francisco Goldman states that, “the families of Ayotzinapa have become such a force … They are tireless. Nothing will ever make them give up.” Goldman goes on to show that, while the students have been physically silenced, “no bodies” does not equal “nobody.” “No bodies” does not equal “nothing.” (Source). “Not found” does not mean any other than they have not been found.
Ayotzinapa’s tragedy has united Mexico and further – protests and demonstrations marking the year anniversary of the disappearances were held globally. And it must continue to unite, it must not be forgotten* for it is only through action and unity that justice can take place.
International pressure on the Mexican government is vital. To know more or to participate in bringing about change, visit http://ukmx2015.org/about/organizations/ or https://www.facebook.com/groups/708103712591511/?fref=ts for Manchester specifically.
* See President Enrique Peña Nieto comments that Mexico must ‘move on’, here.
