In a shocking video released Monday, Mexican military order a murder after a confrontation. It happened on July 3, in Nuevo Laredo. The bullets had ended. The soldiers surrounded one of the opposing trucks. In the images, published by the newspaper El Universal, it is seen that a person raises his head from the pick-up pan. Then, one of the uniformed men yells: "He's alive!" And another answers, "kill him to the cock!". That day 12 civilians died according to the Army account. There were no injuries.
The confrontation happened at dawn. A military convoy was patrolling an avenue in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in northeastern Mexico, when a group of armed civilians attacked them with bullets. That is at least the version that the Army gave. The military answered. One of the soldiers, the one in charge of the machine gun of one of the military vans, recorded everything with his regulation camera. There were hundreds of shots.
Until now, part of the video that the soldier recorded was known, published by the Army itself in July. In the images you can see the turret of the truck and the soldier who carries the camera shooting, although it is not possible to see how far away the alleged criminals are.
The violence in the images has had even more impact because at least three of the dead were not part of any criminal group and were shot at close range. On the contrary, they had been kidnapped days before by the criminals and that day they were tied up, locked in one of the criminals' vans. However, the Secretary of Defense avoided differentiating them in its reports.
This Monday, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, referred to the images, saying that he will investigate what happened. "This morning I gave instructions to the Secretary of National Defense to investigate because we are not going to allow these practices. That was done before, there was the slogan of finishing off the wounded in confrontations ”.
The images suggest, however, that the confrontations continue to be resolved in the same way as in the past and feed the debate on the opacity of the Armed Forces in handling sensitive information for the public opinion. The video published this Monday was known to the Army commanders but it was hidden for more than six weeks without action being taken until it was published in the press. At the same time, it calls into question the actions of the prosecution, which has been in charge of investigations since July.
Criticized for perpetuating the police role of the military, López Obrador and his government now face doubts about a strategy that generates new problems that it is trying to quell. Cases similar to that of Nuevo Laredo have occurred in the two past administrations - the executions of Tlatlaya, or the murder of the two Tec students, in Monterrey, for example - but the president tried to distance himself, pointing out that the military would no longer repress .
The images revealed, however, point to the distance between the president's wishes and the dark spots left by the fight against organized crime. The video shows that no other military man had the regulation camera turned on and stirred up the debate on the role played by the military deployed in the streets, unrelated to the scrutiny of the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection.