Disappearance of the 43, an open case

Nine years after the disappearance of the 43 normal students in Iguala, the case remains open as there are no solid clues about their whereabouts.

The report Ayotzinapa, narrative of the events according to the investigationscarried out by the Secretariat of National Defense and released yesterday by the federal government, offers a list of the 15 institutions that contributed 41,297 documents, testimonies, interviews, files, photographs, audios, videos and maps, but without concluding where they ended up Young.

It is detailed that there are 132 detainees, including 41 members of Guerreros Unidos, 71 police officers from the three levels of government and 14 military personnel.

It establishes three possible causes for the disappearances, which had already been considered in the first investigations: that it was a confusion by Guerreros Unidos regarding the alleged infiltration of Los Rojos among the students. Also, that they wanted to be taught a lesson in a context of threats from the mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, against whom the normalistas had protested due to the murder of three social leaders. The other hypothesis is the transfer of drugs and the possible presence of drugs, weapons or money on the buses taken.

They deliver the report of the 43 without answers

The official document on the disappearance of the students 9 years ago is not conclusive, despite the accumulation of information and 132 detainees

The Mexican government yesterday made public a document on the disappearance, nine years ago, of the 43 students of the Isidro Burgos rural normal school, titled Ayotzinapa, narrative of the eventsaccording to the investigations, which is not conclusive for what is missing from the case: finding the whereabouts of the young people.

The government document offers a list of the 15 institutions that in these nine years of investigations provided 41,297 documents, testimony, interviews, institutional archives, photographs, audios, videos, maps, although none of these reveal where the missing normal students ended up between the night and early morning of September 26 and 27, 2014.

Of the 15 institutions, the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) is the one that provided the most documentation, according to the official numbers, with 17,061 pages.

The government report does not list among its sources of information the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which provided the Mexican government with approximately 23,000 text messages between members of the Guerreros Unidos criminal gang, which the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked Vice President Kamala Harris.

The official report also presents a total of 132 people who are currently detained in various prisons: 41 members of Guerreros Unidos; 71 police officers: five federal, three federal ministerial, seven state, two from Cocula, nine from Huitzuco and 45 from Iguala; three officials from the Attorney General's Office (FGR); the former secretary of state security of Guerrero; the former municipal president of Iguala; the former president of the DIF of Iguala and 14 elements of the Sedena, who have not declared ministerially where the remains of the normalistas are.

Parents rejected report

The official narrative, 34 pages long, is the document that the parents of the 43 missing normal students refused to be given to them at the meeting they had scheduled with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, last Monday at the National Palace, to which the federal Executive finally he did not attend; In that context it was spread yesterday.

“Report is closer to the historical truth”

The difference between the parents and the narrative offered by the government was described by Vidulfo Rosales, the parents' lawyer, as “closer to the historical truth than to reality.”

Nothing that the government presents as a report nine years after the events is seen as new for the ministerial investigations. Perhaps, the official acceptance of a relationship between the military and organized crime that was operating at the time of the disappearance of the young people in the state of Guerrero and that was revealed by the DEA, although it does not support that the military had an active participation in the events of nine years ago.

The official text establishes that "from various sources there are links between some elements of the Federal Police and the Army that operated in the Iguala region with Guerreros Unidos."

Also that "derived from various statements from different witnesses, as well as text messages provided by the DEA, the then Colonel José Rodríguez Pérez, commander of the 27th Infantry Battalion based in Iguala, Captain José Martínez Crespo and the then Colonel Rafael Hernández Nieto, commander of the 41st Battalion.”

They protected drug traffickers

The document states that the military received money from drug traffickers and not only in exchange for equipment, but even for protection.

In the report made public yesterday on the website of the Presidency of the Republic, however, it is not reported that there were approximately 23 thousand messages that the DEA intercepted and delivered to the Mexican government, but that none of these messages were recorded during the events that occurred on the night of September 26 and early morning of September 27, 2014.

The DEA messages do not reveal any data about what was happening in real time in Iguala nine years ago. It remains to be known whether or not there are messages in real time or if there are any indications of these.

Messages do not reveal the whereabouts of the students

The DEA delivered those 23,000 messages, which do not conclude where the students are either, because it had intercepted the communications of some members of Guerreros Unidos residing in the United States, particularly in Chicago.

In that sense, the US agency was able to record communications that occurred between Guerreros Unidos of Chicago and Iguala. In this accumulation of messages there is no data that indicates that there was communication between them during the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27, nine years ago.

The first communication records from the United Warriors from here and there, related to the events, occurred after one in the afternoon on Saturday, September 27. Even in this way, the United Warriors of Chicago find out what happened in Iguala.

The information made public by the government and announced in President López Obrador's morning conference establishes as "possible causes for the disappearance of the students" three hypotheses that were made from the beginning of the investigations by both the Guerrero state attorney general's office and of the Attorney General's Office, headed by Jesús Murillo, currently detained for this case, although mainly by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), in its recommendation of November 2018.

Confusion of the Guerreros Unidos regarding the alleged infiltration of Los Rojos among the students of Ayotzinapa, in the context of the dispute over the plaza in the Iguala region; the intention to teach the students a lesson in a context of threats from Mayor José Luis Abarca and Guerreros Unidos, after the protests and destruction of the municipal palace of Iguala, due to the disappearance and murder of social leaders Arturo Hernández Cardona, Ángel Román Ramírez and Félix Rafael Bandera; and the transfer of drugs and the possible presence of drugs, weapons or money on any of the buses taken. Hypotheses that are not new, nor are they conclusive to find the whereabouts of the remains of the 43 normalistas.

The section of the government text Links of the authorities with Guerrero Unidos: municipal, state and federal, was also not mentioned since November 28, 2018 in the CNHD Recommendation, where it explains in detail and demonstrates how agents of municipal, state police corporations and federal officials intervened in the events.

Section number 28 of that Recommendation analyzes the actions of the military authorities in the succession of events, including determining the responsibilities they incurred.

The CNDH Recommendation establishes the responsibilities of the authorities of the three levels of government and the three powers. The recommendation is addressed to 17 authorities from the three levels of government, from the President of the Republic to the municipal authorities of Iguala.

Protest echoes in the streets of CDMX

Groups of missing persons joined the peaceful march to remember the 43 students of Ayotzinapa

By Brenda Salas

Nine years without answers, 43 normal students disappeared and thousands of Mexicans in solidarity gathered in a mobilization that awakened the spirit of struggle.

"September 26 is not forgotten, it is a combative struggle," under that slogan, around 20 contingents of young normalistas arrived to join the mobilization that keeps alive the hope of finding the 43 young people from Ayotzinapa.

But they were not the only ones, as this march was joined by other groups searching for missing migrants who have been lost track of during their path to the American dream.

In the mobilization that began at the Ángel de la Independencia, in CDMX, the parents of the normalistas got off the bus and, protected by the Marabunta Humanitarian Peace Brigade, went to the front to lead the march. With a photograph of their relatives at chest level, they looked to the past with pain, but maintaining firmness in the search for their children.

They do not forget his face or his dreams, nor his name, the tour began and in front of the Memorial to the Disappeared, the roll call of the 43 young people took place.

With tired feet that have traveled a via crucis of almost a decade and a throat torn by screams that have not been heard, the mobilization arrived at the Plaza Constitución to remember the 43 disappeared, as well as pay tribute to the relatives who died without knowing the whereabouts of their children.

As a mother, on behalf of the 43 parents, I want to say that this path has not been easy, I know it and that it is going to be more difficult. And because of the love we have for our children we continue standing and we will continue standing, because they will never see us defeated or on our knees," said Hilda Hernández, mother of one of the missing young people.

“Time does not heal everything, Mexico has memory and the fight will continue firmly,” is how one of those attending the march expressed it.

Hooded men cause destruction

Although the march passed largely peacefully, at least twenty hooded people carried out acts of vandalism and caused damage to businesses, such as restaurants, where they destroyed furniture, such as chairs and tables, as well as glassware.

With information from the Editorial

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