The victims will be erased from the collective memory 2023/11/10

They want to erase the collective memory of the abuses of power against the civilian population, in the event that security forces are involved, and protection of criminal groups, just as the dictatorships of the southern cone did, with all proportion.

But, in reality, what is encouraged is that the crimes are forgotten and that not even a memory of the victims is kept.

“To erase from the collective memory their atrocities and to erase from the collective memory the identity of their victims: that has been (and is) the stratagem of all those, in the history of humanity, who have mercilessly murdered men and women—without distinction.” of age—in the name of inhuman creeds and interests,” says Salvadoran activist Luis Armando González.

The ideologists of the regimes take on the task of “twisting” historical facts, adjusting them to their political-electoral purposes. It is, in fact, creating the story of the perpetrators.

It is not a minor thing that this government has been involved in. It is not yet known if it is his hard wing that convinced him or it is the head of the Executive motu proprio.

Without a doubt, Karla Quintana, who recently resigned as head of the National Persons Search Commission, must be described as brave and consistent. In a forum she confirmed that the federal government “intends to erase missing persons with a new official census, coordinated by the Ministry of Welfare, and give the appearance of a decrease in the severity of the problem.”

Quintana chaired the commission for more than four years and had the mission of locating around 110,000 missing persons, which is why he criticized that the “new” census, announced in June by the government, is not conducted by the state search commissions, but by the Secretary of Welfare.

Collectives of searchers throughout the country had already been warning of this presidential strategy. Cecilia Flores, a searching mother from Sonora, said that it was a mistake to look for the missing in the houses, "but in the fields, in prisons and hospitals," because "there is a lack of sensitivity, empathy, solidarity" and there is disdain from the President , who does not want to meet with the groups.

This manipulation has provoked an international demonstration. The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances expressed concern on two issues. The first, the increase in disappearances in national territory, especially of girls, boys and adolescents and, the second, requested details about the “new” census ordered by President López Obrador to the Ministry of Welfare, to which Mexico did not respond. Horacio Ravenna, rapporteur of the committee, said that “we have noted, with concern, that the phenomenon of forced disappearance continues to increase.” For the UN, what this census does is re-victimize families, which violates international conventions.

Who benefits from “shaving” the census for electoral purposes? To those responsible for the disappearances, state agents or criminals. It provides them with a blanket of protection.

González says it well: “In El Salvador, the victims of the state and paramilitary terror of the seventies and eighties were condemned to non-existence and their executioners, together with their accomplices (...), did everything “that it was within his power to have his crimes erased from history.”