100 Months Without Justice
On the 26th day of each month, since the big demonstrations of 2014, the parents of the 43 disappeared march in Mexico’s capital and other cities to demand truth and justice. Photo by Alejandro Meléndez Ortiz
More than eight years after the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico, there are still half-truths and pending justice, as President López Obrador is unable to overcome what still remains from the old political system in Mexico
Editor’s note: Témoris Grecko’s relentless and incisive reporting into the crimes in Iguala and the disappearance of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa makes him a voice of authority on the subject. In 2016, he published “Mentira histórica. Estado de impunidad, impunidad de Estado” (Proceso, 2016), he wrote and produced the documentaries, “Mirar Morir. El Ejército en la noche de Iguala” (2015) and “Mirar Morir. Addendum” (2020), as well as the podcasts series, “Ayotzinapa. Los crímenes y la implicación presidencial” (2023).
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The confrontation between the military and students who were protesting the disappearance of 43 young students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, was not itself new. As on so many previous occasions, it was young people, who supported the demonstrations by parents demanding justice for their children, that tried to enter a police station by force, but the military’s anti-riot forces pushed them back. It was the usual script until, inexplicably, a live war band emerged, playing the “toque de ataque,” an attack call, like an ominous coded message.
It was strange for something like this to happen in September 2022, during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration and eight years after the still unpunished crimes against students of the Ayotzinapa school for rural teachers.
Giovanni Galindes Guerrero was 20 years old the night he and his companions disappeared. His parents, María Elena Guerrero and Alfredo Galindes, are rural teachers, the kind who try to open the path of education to children in the countryside, and Giovanni wanted to follow the same path. Jorge Álvarez Nava taught himself to play the guitar. He aspired to study medicine, so his father, Epifanio Álvarez, tried to come to the United States without papers to pay for his studies, but he was arrested and deported, and he returned to work in the fields alongside his wife, Blanca Luz. Jorge took the only option he had: enter the Ayotzinapa school. The same was done by José Ángel Navarrete González, son of Angélica González and Emiliano Navarrete, from the town of Tixtla, who instilled in him the desire to study so he wouldn’t end up as a bricklayer.
The "anti-monument" to the 43 disappeared, located (since 2015) at an important intersection on the most famous street in Mexico City, Paseo de la Reforma, was the first of a long series of sculptures in memory of different groups of victims. They were installed by demonstrators primarily to protest various issues, but also to challenge the government’s exclusive right to determine public space. They’ve been a significant part of the capital's political culture. Photo by Alejandro Meléndez
For them and 40 other young people who were showered with bullets on September 26, 2014 in the city of Iguala and were later disappeared by government forces, a demonstration is held in Mexico City and in cities in the state of Guerrero on the 26th day of each month.
During the first four years after the crimes, the government of then-President Enrique Peña Nieto tried to cover up the criminal plot responsible for those disappearances and six additional murders. This caused great displeasure in various sectors of Mexican society and was the cause of frequent skirmishes between students and law enforcement. That was the period of the so-called "historical lie," in reference to Ayotzinapa and its bogus investigation.
It was thought that the second phase would be that of truth and justice. This began in 2018, when then president-elect López Obrador promised to investigate the fate of the disappeared and prosecute both those responsible for the attacks and the officials who supposedly were looking for them. For the first time since the disappearances, the faces of mothers and fathers lit up with smiles and hope.
Four years later, in the weeks leading up to that eighth anniversary, progress was slow for the relatives. The scant remains of student, Alexander Mora Venancio, were identified in 2015, as were those of Jhosivani Guerrero and Christian Rodríguez in 2020. These were the only remains discovered of the 43 missing.
Suddenly, an avalanche of judicial developments occurred, with the issuance of dozens of arrest warrants and the execution of several of them, only to end up with a dead stop and significant setbacks due to decisions that were as strange as they were unexpected. This has caused a serious credibility crisis regarding the government's ability to get to the bottom of what happened, and has increased fears that the power of the military is greater than the presidential will.
The second phase, which was supposed to be the final one, ended up being that of a promise not yet fulfilled. So began a third phase, whose nature is unknown. The Ayotzinapa case remains unresolved and no one knows where the case is headed.
THE HISTORIC LIE
The solemn Museum of Memory and Tolerance, in front of the grand Alameda Central in Mexico City, was the scene of an emotional, life-giving meeting on September 26, 2018 between parents of the 43 disappeared and López Obrador, who had won the presidential election and was preparing to take office. Through María Elena Guerrero, Giovanni's mother, they gave him the recognition denied to Peña Nieto: "For us, he is already president," because "right now, our hearts beat, our hopes are in them (the new government) and their commitment to comply. Together we will make history, as our president has said."
"They are an example for all those who fight in Mexico and in the world for justice, for their dedication to this noble cause," the president-elect responded, reiterating, "my commitment to comply, not to fail in this case to the mothers, to the parents of the young people of Ayotzinapa, and not to fail the people of Mexico.”
On September 26, 2018, some of the parents of the 43 disappeared students from Ayotzinapa met with Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his officials at the Memory and Tolerance Museum, four years after the crimes in Iguala, Guerrero. Photo by Alejandro Meléndez
Four years went by and on that same date in 2022, the relatives returned to the political heart of the country, the enormous Zócalo square, where they usually deliver the most important speeches of the many given each year in front of the tens of thousands who come to listen to them. "No, Mr. President, we want the truth," said Blanca Luz Nava, Jorge's mother. Emiliano Navarrete, José Ángel's father, lamented, "If we had made a little progress with this government, when it came to the point of dealing with the army, (now), everything (has) fell apart."
In November 2014, a few weeks after the attacks against the Ayotzinapa students, the Peña Nieto government wanted to come up with a quick solution to the problem of the disappeared. In the official version, which the then-Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam called “historic truth” (later revealed to be a lie), the students were infiltrated by criminals; they had gone to the city of Iguala as part of a dispute between criminals and with the aim of sabotaging a political act; they had been attacked by armed civilians and municipal police officers under orders of the mayor; they had been rounded up in a single group, taken to the garbage dump in the neighboring town of Cocula, killed and incinerated on a makeshift open-air pyre so impossibly efficient that nothing but ashes remained with no trace of personal belongings, not even DNA; and that their remains had been thrown into a small river.
According to this version, everything was strictly local. Few believed it. The link between the military and the different police forces with organized crime in Guerrero is historic. In the 1970s, when then-Colonel and later General, Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, was put in charge of law enforcement in the state, he combined a repression of scorched earth tactics and “flights of death” (from airplanes, they threw political detainees into the ocean) with the introduction of poppy cultivation (to produce heroin) and other illegal activities.
But the “historic truth” was built to minimize the scope of the authorities' participation: that apart from the municipal ones, no other higher level - state or federal - was involved.
And it had to hide the crux of the conflict: The police, military, and civilian officials who spoke on the subject never discussed the keyword, the word that would explain the common thread between the armed men, those police officers, and the mayor: heroin. It was hidden.
THE COVAJ VERSION
After years of lies and even harassment, defamation, and government espionage against investigators and journalists who denounced the deception, and against mothers and fathers who did not give up on their demand for justice, the new government of López Obrador formed a special prosecutor's office and a Commission for Truth and Justice (COVAJ, in Spanish).
‘Unknown to the students at the time, was that one of the five buses they had taken had hidden a package of heroin to be smuggled into the United States that was worth millions of dollars.’
The investigations dragged for months and soon years until in August 2022, when the government’s Undersecretary for Human Rights and head of COVAJ, Alejandro Encinas, surprised everyone with a report (still missing important elements) that painted a completely different picture than the "historic lie.” The report stated that the students had no connection to the crime rings, nor did they go to sabotage any act, but that they arrived in Iguala by accident and that their objective was to find transportation to bring groups of students to a demonstration in Mexico City. It further states that they were not attacked by criminals to prevent their arrival in the city, but rather to prevent them from leaving. The reason, unknown to the students at the time, was that one of the five buses they had taken had hidden a package of heroin to be smuggled into the United States that was worth millions of dollars.
Students from Ayotzinapa, along with mothers and fathers of the 43 disappeared and members of civil society groups, held a march on September 26, 2018 in Mexico City to commemorate the fourth anniversary of their disappearance in Iguala, Guerrero. Photo by Alejandro Meléndez Ortiz
The students were never brought together in a single group, transferred to the dump, or cremated. In the effort to recover the so-called “fifth bus,” various groups of criminals and police officers took them to different directions, and apparently they murdered them with methods as cruel as they were different. The most serious aspect is that none of this happened just at the local level. Each one of the student's movements was monitored and sent in real time through a national security communications system, so different authorities were aware of the events but chose not to help the defenseless civilians under armed attack. Even worse, agents from different state and federal police forces, as well as the military, participated in the attacks. According to Undersecretary Encinas, Colonel José Rodríguez Pérez, commander of the 27th Infantry Battalion, directly ordered the murder of at least six of the disappeared.
The COVAJ report – which is incomplete and not even final – was still causing a stir when 83 arrest warrants were issued, two of them against generals and 18 against other soldiers (of whom four were arrested, including Rodríguez Pérez). Former Attorney General Murillo Karam was also arrested.
Students hold hands to protect demonstrators as they march in Mexico City to the main square, the Zócalo, on September 26, 2018, commemorating four years since their 43 companions were disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero. Photo by Alejandro Meléndez
THE ARMY INTERVENES
It seemed that the government had managed to break the impunity pact that protected the generals and the highest-ranking former civil servants. There was speculation as to whether they would also accuse Peña Nieto's Cabinet secretaries, or the former president himself. Without his intervention, it is unlikely that his ministers of the Interior, Defense, and the Navy, in addition to the attorney general and the intelligence agency, could have colluded in coming up with the “historic lie.”
Murillo Karam's own arrest was the first sign that something was wrong. This happened right under the nose of the special prosecutor Omar Gómez Trejo, who wanted to beef up his accusations before presenting them before a judge. Just as he and key members of his team were in Israel and Panama working on legal procedures related to the case, his boss, the attorney general, ordered Murillo Karam's arrest and requested - and obtained - the withdrawal of 21 of the 83 arrest warrants, including 16 against members of the military. Upon returning to Mexico, Gómez Trejo found that 20 investigative police agents under his command had been removed. He resigned on September 27, one day after the eighth anniversary.
‘The clearest, most transparent proof that this government is willing to clarify the facts of the Ayotzinapa case will be to bring back those (arrest) orders.’
The attorney general did not explain his decisions. It was President López Obrador that did the explaining. Although the judge found sufficient grounds to grant them, the president asserted, without any evidence, that the 21 orders which were withdrawn had been requested to "light up the investigation,” and that "thinking that this would cause a rebellion in the army (and that then) we would have to turn back the clock so as not to touch anyone.” The president's statement tacitly implicated the special prosecutor, because he was the one who requested the arrest warrants. However, when asked directly if it had indeed been the prosecutor, López Obrador said no, leaving his serious accusation out in the open and ambiguous.
100 MONTHS
It is January 26, 2023. The march that the mothers and fathers of the disappeared do every month in Mexico City in front of the Memory and Tolerance Museum, where a presidential promise that once gave them hope now gives them doubts, finishes at the statue of Benito Juárez, the hero who led the defense of the country against the invading French army until victory in 1867.
The contingent of mothers and fathers of the 43 disappeared leads the demonstration on September 26, 2018. In the background is the Angel of Independence monument, the traditional start of these marches. Photo by Alejandro Meléndez
An independent government transparency body has ordered the prosecution to report why it requested to withdraw the arrest warrants. But the investigation has been stalled. The special prosecutor was replaced with a lawyer with no experience in investigations or litigations. This is an official completely oblivious to an extremely complex and extensive case that has generated hundreds of thousands of documents and, unlike his predecessor, does not have the support of the victims. The question remains whether the president will finally be able to impose on the military his constitutional authority and his commitment to justice. He has only 20 months left in office.
If, between October 2014 and January 2015, there was a great anger in the streets of Mexico, mirrored in dozens of countries by what was called “Global Actions for Ayotzinapa,” now the anniversary demonstrations bring together only a few thousand people. The monthly events have fewer participants, although they serve to remind society that what outraged them remains alive and well, in impunity. That their demands for truth and justice have only been partially met and that they should not give up.
This January afternoon, the mothers and fathers look sad, determined to continue the fight, but with a new kind of anger. It’s no longer about the abused and persecuted, but that of those with great disappointment. Their lawyer, Vidulfo Rosales, explains that “their position is that of continuing the dialogue, the rebuilding of trust, and bringing back those arrest warrants that were withdrawn. The clearest, most transparent proof that this government is willing to clarify the facts of the Ayotzinapa case will be to bring back those (arrest) orders.”
Behind the relatives is a new generation of students from Ayotzinapa and other schools for rural teachers. They are 17, 19, and 21 years old. They were between nine and 13 years old when their 43 cohorts were dragged into the unknown. The fight has become old. While today is not another anniversary, it does feel like a special date because 100 months have passed without justice. 100 months that represent, for these young men, nearly half of their lives.
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Témoris Grecko is an award-winning political scientist, journalist, and documentary filmmaker who has covered armed conflicts on every continent and has authored seven non-fiction books.
Alejandro Meléndez was born in Mexico City. He studied communication science at the School of Political and Social Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and photography at the Center for Marti Studies in Havana, Cuba. He is a freelance photographer, deputy director of the website Periodistas Unidos (United Journalists) and a member of the FotorreporterosMx collective. He worked at the newspapers El Financiero, La Jornada and Excélsior and the sports publication Récord. He has also worked at the news agencies Notimex, Clasos, AFP, Xinhua y Procesofoto and has contributed to the magazines focused on music, including Mosca, Rolling Stone, Grita Radio and website Me Hace Ruido. He has written two books: Culturas Juveniles, edited by the UNAM School of Political and Social Science and Luminiescencias with the publishing house Literal. He won the Gabriel García Márquez award in 2019 in the innovation category for joint reporting on “Mujeres de la Vitrina” (Showcase Women).