The case of the 43 teacher education students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014 has taken on new momentum.
The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who created a Truth Commission headed by the Undersecretary for Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, shortly after taking power, has intensified the search for justice.
The recent arrest of the head of the investigation, the former attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, and the hearing against him this Wednesday, adds to the presentation of an extensive report on what happened that night from 26 to 27 September.
In recent days, two important points that go beyond the persecution and murder of young people have been officially clarified for the first time:
the active participation of state agents with members of organized crime and the entire government apparatus of Enrique Peña Nieto (from 2012 to 2018) dedicated to staging a false version that included torture of detainees and manipulation of crime scenes.
An action that not only prevented access to the truth, but also reveals the darkest practices of the State to bury it for eight years.
What is known about what happened that night
It is known that the square was hot.
That the students of the Raúl Isidro Burgos school in Ayoztinapa had provoked disturbances since the previous year against the municipal government of Iguala, headed by Mayor José Luis Abarca, for the disappearance and murder of peasant leader Arturo Hernández Cardona.
Que Abarca and organized crime threatened them: if they returned to City Hall, they would face the consequences.
That the criminal groups that controlled the area, Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos, were in a fight for the power of the territory.
Due to their tradition of social struggle in this type of school and in the face of the government's attempt to control them, the Army had infiltrated a soldier among the young people, Julio César López Patolzin.
His mission: to inform the commanders of the activities of the normalistas.
Assemblies, rallies and marches and any movement that "put national security at risk," reads the Commission's report.
The last report of him was on September 26 at 10 in the morning.
He disappeared along with the rest.
No military command ordered the search for him, as required by protocol, which would have made it possible to find or learn the truth about the students.
On September 25, the normalistas were preparing to attend the historic march on October 2 in Mexico City —a demonstration that was repeated every year and brought together social leaders from all over the country to commemorate the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968— .
Every year, they looked for a way for private line buses to take them to the capital.
That day they had only gotten eight of the 20 they needed.
An element of the Attorney General's Office and the National Search Commission during a visit to the Barranca de la "Carnicería" located in the Municipality of Cocula, in the State of Guerrero, on September 21, 2021. Nayeli Cruz
At 11:30 a.m. on the morning of September 26, a group of normalistas tried to “take” more buses at the Chilpancingo terminal, but the authorities prevented them from doing so and they returned to Ayotzinapa, 15 kilometers away.
In the afternoon, they planned to go north, Iguala, to the municipality of Rancho del Cura to ask for money and continue taking buses.
At 5:00 p.m., two student buses leave for that direction.
One of those buses, with 80 students, continues towards a booth in Iguala to try to catch another vehicle on the federal highway.
The group from the first bus gets another one (which they have to leave later) and goes to the Iguala bus station to drop off the rest of the passengers.
Two more buses of normalistas arrive there to support their classmates: they walk the platforms and decide to take three more.
At 9:16 p.m. that night, the students leave the Iguala station with five buses.
Four exited through the main street and the fifth, the suspect, exited through the rear of the terminal.
From that moment begins a persecution of young people.
17 checkpoints are installed within a radius of 80 kilometers, made up of the municipal police and members of organized crime.
And they were detained at gunpoint at two points: on Juan N. Álvarez street and another, at the Palace of Justice, to the east of the city, where a federal police checkpoint was set up and two other checkpoints nearby, to the south and west, by organized crime, Guerreros Unidos, with the help of the municipal police.
Iguala police shot up the buses, punctured the tires, and shot one of them in the head in Juan N. Álvarez.
Aldo Gutiérrez Solano, the first dead.
It was 10 pm.
At that time, two student vehicles leave Tixtla, about 120 kilometers to the south, to help their classmates, since they had already been warned that they were being persecuted and attacked at different points in Iguala.
Hours later, according to the testimonies of some detained members of Guerreros Unidos and the intercepted messages, the narco gave the order to kill them, assuring that they were rivals of Los Rojos and not students.
The students aboard four trucks are detained and taken to different police stations in Iguala and in Huiztuco, a nearby town, whose police chief spoke that night with a leader of Guerreros Unidos.
At 10:40 p.m., the fifth truck, suspected of carrying drugs, stops when it reaches the Palace of Justice and is searched by federal police.
They don't block his way, unlike the rest, they only lower the young people who have to run to escape from the police who are chasing them with bullets.
A man rides his bicycle in front of a banner with the images of the 43 disappeared students from the Ayotzinapa normal school, in Mexico City, on August 23, 2022. RODRIGO ARANGUA (AFP)
At 11:30 p.m. another attack took place at the southern checkpoint, at the Santa Teresa crossing, the policemen from Huiztuco, the nearby town that supported the Iguala police, shot at the local football team Los Avispones bus from different points and three people were killed: one of the players, a woman who was in a taxi and the bus driver who died days later in a hospital.
The intelligence information indicated that they were confused with the normalistas.
After midnight, students and members of the State Coordinator of Education Workers of Guerrero give a press conference in Iguala.
And around 12:15 a.m., gunmen from Guerreros Unidos attacked the participants and gunned down two normalistas.
The rest run to take shelter on a roof, on a piece of land and in two houses.
One of those killed, Julio César Mondragón,
El Chilango
, was shot while he was running and his body was found tortured the next morning.
Between 3 and 8 in the morning of September 27, it is presumed that the order was given to execute and disappear the students.
But the report does not reveal the details of the communications between members of organized crime and authorities.
Starting at 8 in the morning, the government operation begins to hide the truth.
The report points to something important: four days after the night in Iguala, six students were still alive, kidnapped in a warehouse in Pueblo Viejo.
Nobody did anything.
On September 30 there is a record that a certain Colonel had already taken care of those six students and would take on the task of “cleaning everything”.
The remains of the students were hidden at different points.
Some, at least five, were "cooked", dissolved in acid.
What could not be hidden was transferred to three ranches —La Mina, Lomas de Coyote, Rancho del Cura— and one more piece of information that is key: to the Army installations in Guerrero, the 27th Battalion.
What was the so-called "historical truth"?
The main objective of the so-called "historic truth", named after Mexico's own attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam - arrested last week and accused of forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice - was to shelve the tragedy as soon as possible. , according to the report of the Commission.
But also, hide the links of organized crime with federal authorities, including the Army.
That the members of organized crime and the municipal and state authorities who had collaborated with them pay.
But that the matter did not escalate to the office of the federal government of Peña Nieto.
For this, a narrative of the facts was designed to measure, which included the torture of the detainees to falsify testimonies and even the manipulation of invented crime scenes.
They came to deposit the remains of a normalista, Alexander Mora, on the stage that fit for his version, the Cocula dump.
Yellow police tape in the Barranca del Carnicero, where the remains of Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre, one of the 43 disappeared students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College, in the town of Cocula, in the state of Guerrero, were found on July 8 2020.HENRY ROMERO (Reuters)
The story that has remained in the collective memory for eight years and was designed by the previous government consisted of the students seeking to boycott an act by the wife of the Mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca.
What caused the persecution and arrest of the normalistas.
According to this version, the young people were transferred to the Police Headquarters in Iguala.
And there, delivered to organized crime.
Gunmen from Guerreros Unidos incinerated them in the Cocula garbage dump, mistaking them for rivals from Los Rojos.
And the remains were thrown into a nearby river.
This version was questioned from the beginning, mainly by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), which also provided evidence during these years that refuted the "historical truth", a work that has been key to the preparation of the report of the current Government.
High-level politicians indicted
According to the report, the politicians and high-level officials singled out for torture and forced disappearance are, in addition to Murillo Karam, the director of the Criminal Investigation Agency and head of the Prosecutor's Office operations at the time, Tomás Zerón —a fugitive and refugee in Israel, Mexico seeks his extradition.
Also, the deputy attorney of the SEIDO (Deputy Attorney Specialized in Investigation of Organized Crime), Rodrigo Archundia;
the person in charge of the office of the same institution, Hugo Ruiz and the head of the Specialized Kidnapping Unit, Gualberto Ramírez.
The accusations extend to senior officials of the Navy, the CISEN (intelligence center), the Federal Police, where the current Mexico City Police Chief, Omar García Harfuch, is mentioned;
in addition to high-ranking Army commanders, such as Commander Alejandro Saavedra.
On November 30, 2017, with Peña Nieto still in power, Saavedra was appointed Chief of the National Defense General Staff.
With the entry of López Obrador to the presidency, Saavedra did not reach the highest position in Sedena —as former secretary Salvador Salvador Cienfuegos had recommended—, but he did obtain the direction of the Social Security Institute for the Armed Forces.
After the arrest of Murillo Karam, the highest-level politician sitting on the bench for the events to date, the Attorney General's Office of the Republic announced the request for
83 arrest warrants.
Among them, those of 20 military commanders and troop personnel from the 27th and 41st infantry battalions, 11 state police officers from Guerrero, 26 municipal agents from Huitzuco, 6 from Iguala and one more from Cocula.
Also included in the list are 14 members of Guerreros Unidos and 5 administrative and judicial authorities from Guerrero.
Then-Attorney General of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam during a press conference in Mexico City, Mexico, on November 7, 2014. Susana Gonzalez (Bloomberg)
How many detainees are there in the case and how many have been released?
The report mentions that 112 arrests were made, including drug traffickers, former public officials and a member of the Armed Forces.
And it adds: “the arrest of relevant targets, accused of forced disappearance, torture and other crimes, is pending.”
One day after that report was made public, Murillo Karam was arrested.
The Commission denounces the bureaucratic labyrinth that complicated access to justice in this case.
There are 28 open court cases in seven courts in seven states of the country and also with two different accusatory systems, since the new criminal procedure came into force in the middle of the processes.
A Tamaulipas judge released 77 alleged perpetrators of the disappearance for having been tortured by the authorities.
In February of this year, another detainee, a worker of the C4 system of public security cameras, was released, and whose testimony was key to the "historical truth", due to lack of evidence.
In 2019, another detainee was released, Marco Antonio N., alias
La Pompi
, an alleged member of Guerreros Unidos who participated in the persecution and murder of at least one normalista —according to intercepted messages—.
The great unknowns that the report does not clear
Despite the Commission's investigation intensifying the search for truth and justice for what happened that night.
There are still significant gaps in the case.
It does not clarify where the remains of the 40 missing students are, three have already been identified.
The messages about the orders for the execution and disappearance of the students have not been revealed, so it is not known who gave the order or why.
Nor what led the federal government to organize a plot of these dimensions to hide the truth.
It doesn't delve into the role of the Army, why they didn't do anything even with an infiltrated soldier.
And there is no more information on how it is possible that the remains of some of them were taken to the facilities of a battalion in Guerrero and what they did with them.
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