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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://resumen-english.org/2022/08/mexico-declares-ayotzinapa-43-case-a-state-crime/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Mexico Declares Ayotzinapa 43 Case A State Crime</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits"></div>By Alejandra Garcia on August 23, 2022</div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-wrapper2">
<div id="gmail-attachment_21202" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-21202" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/8-24-mex-ale-img.jpg?resize=300%2C199&ssl=1" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="300" height="199"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-21202" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">photo: Bill Hackwell</p></div>
<p>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.<span id="gmail-more-21201"></span></p>
<p>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</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Their actions, omissions, and participation it concluded “allowed the
disappearance and execution of the students, as well as the homicide of
six other people,”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US</p>
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