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Ayotzinapa: Progress, But Still Questions
The government of Claudia Sheinbaum this week presented its first public report on the progress of the investigation into the disappearance of 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa on September 26, 2014. The report reveals new lines of inquiry, the arrest of 31 people, including the former governor of Guerrero, evidence of a cover-up, and ties between public officials and organized crime. But despite the progress, the government, critics, human rights advocates, and the victims’ families all agree that 12 years later, it is still unknown what happened, where the young men are, or who is covering up their disappearance.
The report highlights four new lines of investigation that “point to a relationship between public officials—especially state and municipal officials—and the Guerreros Unidos organized crime group as those directly responsible for the forced disappearance of the 43 student teachers in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014,” La Jornada reports. The lines of inquiry include the analysis of tens of thousands of communications, a review of the missing students’ cellphones, and the examination of records and concealed video footage.
Among the revelations are evidence of an apparent collusion with organized crime involving a funeral home and the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo), where bone fragments and an illegal crematorium were reportedly discovered, all in Iguala under the control of one family. The report noted that 31 people have been arrested in connection with the case during the current administration, including former Guerrero Governor Ángel Aguirre and another military officer, in addition to the 16 already arrested by the previous federal government.
In the report presented Monday by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), officials also disclosed that they had established the identities of people who made calls connected to the case, including calls made from the missing students’ cellphones days and even weeks after their disappearance. Those callers had contact with members of Guerreros Unidos. The report also documents the destruction of evidence, including security recordings, as well as falsified documents. Among those arrested in the case, the most notable is Ángel Aguirre Rivero, who was governor of Guerrero when the events occurred.
However, the officials in charge of the report appeared to dismiss the existence of 853 files that the families of the missing students have been demanding from the Army for years. The official position is that the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) has already turned over all the requested information. They also did not answer a question about whether former Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos had been questioned. But they emphasized that, in the case of the 17 military personnel who have been arrested, each one bears individual responsibility: “It is not against the Defense institution, but rather an allegation made against each individual… because of their links to organized crime.”
For the families, the wound remains open. “We cannot simply settle for the response that Sedena has already handed over everything,” the mothers and fathers of the 43 student teachers emphasized in an interview. Regarding murdered student teacher Julio César Mondragón, whose case was formally presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, there has been no official response. “The State’s silence before the IACHR is not a pending administrative matter; it is a continuation of the same impunity that has marked this case since the night of Iguala,” said the Red Solidaria Década Contra la Impunidad, led by Bishop Raúl Vera López, on behalf of the young man’s family. ▶️ VIDEO
Ulises Martínez, now a teacher, was an Ayotzinapa student teacher in 2014 and witnessed some of the events during the attack on his classmates. He recounted what he remembers to La Jornada, concluding that 12 years later, the night of September 26 has not ended.
Martínez recalls that the students suspected there were government spies among them. Luis Hernández Navarro writes about the military spy at Ayotzinapa who was disguised as a student teacher and who regularly reported his classmates’ activities to military officers in Iguala. “The presence of López Patolzin as a spy at the rural teachers’ college was not the initiative of an isolated military commander, but rather a policy of the military institution,” Hernández writes. “Officials at different levels knew at all times what had happened to the 43 Ayotzinapa student teachers, but they concealed and manipulated the information. There must have been a reason.”
The anniversary of the 43 Ayotzinapa students was marked by a massive march to the Zócalo, where the families, accompanied by student teachers, social organizations, and other allies, declared that the questions first raised on September 26, 2014—what happened, who gave the order for the attack, and where are they?—remain unanswered. “After 12 years, we still have no answers,” the families protested.
President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated that the case will not be closed until the truth and justice are found and “we find out where the young men are. That is our commitment.”
La Jornada’s editorial stated: “We can hope that the progress made will help accelerate the full clarification of what happened and establish responsibility for those most deeply involved at the state and federal levels. The investigations must continue with a full willingness to listen to and take into account the views of the parents, without whose participation there can be no justice.”
The Quote:
“I listened to Venezuelan waltzes, joropo, tamunangue, salsa, merengue, bolero, rancheras, flamenco, tango, Argentine sambas, seis por derecho, and bachata. All of that is part of my musical culture, just as much as Beethoven, Mahler, Schubert, Shostakovich, Wagner, De Falla, Revueltas, and Tchaikovsky.”
-Gustavo Dudamel, as he began his tenure as director of the New York Philharmonic.
In Case You Missed It
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◻️ Meeting between progressive leaders from Mexico City and New York. “We want cities to be for the people, places that people can make their own, rather than places where only those who have money can live. And that starts with housing,” explains Clara Brugada, head of Mexico City’s government. After participating in the U20 forum of progressive city leaders in New York, Brugada said that during her talks with her counterpart, Zohran Mamdani, they discussed creating opportunities for cooperation between the governments of the two cities.
◻️ Zohran Mamdani: Immigrants are a force for positive change. “Today we are in a city that is living proof of how immigrants can be a force for positive change. A city where you don’t think twice when you hear Swahili and Spanish, Creole and Cantonese, spoken on the same block,” says Mamdani, mayor of the largest city in the United States, in the newspaper’s pages.
◻️ Seven out of 10 guns come from the U.S. Seven out of every 10 guns seized in Mexico originate in the United States, and their volume has increased in recent years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
◻️ Data centers make false promises. “These data centers being established in Mexico aren’t even intended to benefit Mexican industry, universities, or the country’s technological development,” says Efrén Pérez de la Mora, knowledge management director at Oxfam Mexico. He recommends greater regulation, at least regarding water and electricity use.
◻️ El Fisgón: The fight against digital fascism. “We are in the middle of a cognitive war,” in which the battlefield is our minds, says Rafael Barajas, known as El Fisgón. He describes his new book Training Against Disinformation, as a tool for fighting the far-right forces attempting to fracture thought and collective action.
◻️ Patricio Guzmán, Chile’s filmed memory. The great filmmaker leaves behind a legacy that “consists of taking the pulse of Chilean reality over half a century. He was not a historian, political scientist, or sociologist; he was a filmmaker and, as such, reinvented the political documentary,” writes Marcos Roitman Rosenmann. The Battle of Chile is considered one of the 10 greatest documentaries in the history of cinema.
🎥 What We’re Watching
La maldición de Malinche - Gabino Palomares
Elena Poniatowska interviews Gabino Palomares, who died on September 30.
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Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Álvarez. More information.