[News] Mexico Declares Ayotzinapa 43 Case A State Crime

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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<https://resumen-english.org/2022/08/mexico-declares-ayotzinapa-43-case-a-state-crime/>
Mexico Declares Ayotzinapa 43 Case A State Crime
By Alejandra Garcia on August 23, 2022

photo: Bill Hackwell

On September 26, 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal Rural School
disappeared in the Mexican city of Iguala, in the Guerrero state, and their
loved ones never heard from them again. Eight years later, the controversy
remains unsolved despite the families’ endless calls for justice.

After two years of intense investigations, the case has taken a new turn,
giving the country renewed hope. On August 18, the government of President
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that the case was a “State Crime,”
dismissing the “Historical Truth” fabrication of former President Enrique
Peña Nieto

Until then, the official version stated that a drug gang known as Guerreros
Unidos kidnapped them and ordered their murder; but the new document
reveals large-scale negligence by the authorities involved in the crime and
its subsequent cover-up.

It should be remembered that the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa has a
long tradition of social struggle and usually houses low-income students
from marginalized areas of the state of Guerrero and other regions of the
country who come there to be trained as teachers the return to their
communities.

In 2014, this center was chosen as the location of a rally that would leave
for Mexico City to take part in the marches that were going to happen on
October 2, 2014, in honor of the Tlatelolco massacre that took place in
1968 where 300-400 primarily students were mowed down by government
soldiers in the Plaza de la Tres Culturas.

The “Historical Truth” premise was that on September 26, dozens of students
from 17 to 25 years old went to Iguala to commandeer buses that could take
them days later to the capital. During the alleged robbery, “there were
confrontations between students and police officers, who shot at the
vehicles,” according to reports.

Two students died that night and a third one was found murdered and with
signs of torture the following day. Likewise, dozens of young people were
also detained and released shortly after. But it was never known what
happened to the group of 43 students. Only the remains of three of them
have been identified.

Enrique Peña Nieto’s version said that the students didn’t come to Iguala
for the buses, but to protest an event of Maria de Los Angeles Pineda
Villa, wife of the then-mayor of the town Jose Luis Abarca Velázquez -both
of whom are in prison for their link to the students’ disappearances.

This “historical truth” was called into question from the beginning by
victims’ relatives, national and international organizations, and AMLO’s
administration, which has set out to “find the truth about the missing
young people.”

In 2020, the Truth Commission for the Ayotzinapa (CVAJ), created just days
into AMLO’s term, canceled and nullified the document issued by the Peña
Nieto administration.

Two years later, on August 18, Mexican authorities determined that “The
creation of the ‘historical truth’ was an organized action from the highest
level of government, was aimed at concealing the truth of the facts,
altered the crime scenes, and hid the links between authorities and the
criminal group.”

The CVAJ report adds that “at all times federal, state, and municipal
authorities knew of the students’ rally from the time they left the Isidro
Burgos Normal School until they went missing.”

Their actions, omissions, and participation it concluded “allowed the
disappearance and execution of the students, as well as the homicide of six
other people,”

Right after the case was declared a Crime of the State, the seriousness of
AMLO to get to the bottom of this was clear when prosecutors immediately
arrested 20, army officers, five local officials, 33 local police officers,
11 state police and Jesús Murillo Karam the former Attorney General under
then President Enrique Peña Nieto. The office of the current attorney
general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, said Murillo Karam has been charged with
torture, official misconduct and forced disappearance.

Although the hope of finding the 43 students alive is long gone, since all
indications point to the fact that they were murdered and disappeared,
Mexico and the relatives of the 43 young people yearn to close this
nefarious chapter of the country’s history of violence and to call into
account those responsible for this genocide and this latest development
appears to be accelerating the process towards their day of justice.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US
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