All the security institutions of the Mexican State participated in the events in which the 43 normal school students from Ayotzinapa disappeared, highlighting in a central way the presence of elements of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena), who knew minute by minute what was happening to the young people on September 26, 2014, according to the latest report from the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI).
Municipal police and the state of Guerrero, ministerial agents and the Federal Police, the military, elements of the now-defunct Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN), who even interrogated some detainees, as well as members of organized crime, “have lied and hidden” all these years about their participation in this tragic episode.
So, Angela Buitrago and Carlos Beristain, the last experts who were still working on the case on behalf of the GIEI, said goodbye to our country this Tuesday with a sixth and final report that is forceful against the Mexican State, but especially hard on the Sedena, since its elements in Guerrero were in collusion with drug trafficking, which allowed -at different levels of responsibility- the disappearance of the students.
The experts reiterated that the Mexican Army has repeatedly lied, has refused to provide information, in addition to hiding a fact that for Buitrago and Beristain is serious and fundamental: The Sedena has non-institutionalized facilities in Guerrero where intelligence work is carried out, and whose members are involved in this case.
In the same way, in the opinion of Carlos Beristain, the fate of the 43 normalistas would be different if the military had helped them, but this did not happen because there was “collusion with drug trafficking, with organized crime, elements of the Army and the police.”
Another factor that influenced the defenselessness suffered by the young people from the Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa normal school, whose whereabouts are still unknown, is the “counterinsurgent vision” that the Sedena had of the students.
“This counterinsurgent vision of young people stigmatizes, it is a negative moral mark” that weighed on normalistas, since the Mexican militia considered them as possible members of the guerrilla, Beristain specified.
Additionally, after the disappearance of the 43 students, the Navy also intervened irregularly, altering scenes and contaminating evidence.
lies and impunity
The GIEI experts, expressly appointed in November 2014 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at the request of the Mexican government headed by the president at the time Enrique Pena Nieto, They added that the excessive formalism of the Mexican penal system keeps the disappearance of normalistas in impunity.
Added to this is the fact that the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and later its successor the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), accused most of the detainees of being responsible for organized crime and not for forced disappearance.
In the same way, there are problems with the protected witnesses, highlighting that they, and the relatives of the normalistas, are not really given the security they need, since one of those witnesses, who had revealed the non-existence of fire in the Cocula garbage dump, was already deprived of his life.
The so-called “historical truth” of the PGR indicated that the corpses of the students had been burned in that place, but the GIEI managed to demonstrate scientifically that this was not true.
In their final message, Angela Buitrago and Carlos Beristain acknowledged that the Army has indeed opened part of its files that contain specific data on the events, but “there is more information that is key to moving forward” and to knowing the fate and whereabouts of the young people.
“The risk we have is that lying is institutionalized as a response, which is unacceptable,” Beristain sentenced when insisting on the constant concealment of information by the Sedena. In fact, this attitude of the military commanders “has become in itself a responsibility of the State in the disappearance of young people.”
The GIEI, said Buitrago and Beristain, is withdrawing from our country because the lack of information no longer allows them to work on this case.in which -until now- thanks to his intervention “the modus operandi of a good part of the Mexican state apparatus.
The experts admitted to being frustrated, since they would have preferred that, with their investigations, the location of the 43 normalistas be achieved, although they assured that the key to this lies with the Army, since its staff stationed in Guerrero knew step by step, instantly and in real time, what was happening with the students on the night and early morning of September 26 and 27, 2014.
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surya palaces Journalist and lawyer, specialist in legal analysis and human rights. She has been a reporter, radio host and editor.