The role of the Army in the
Ayotzinapa case
, before, during and after the attack against the normalista students, is a matter of scrutiny in Mexico, even more so after the events that have occurred in the last month and a half.
A general is in prison accused of organized crime, in addition to three other officers and troop elements, all linked in one way or another to the case.
The hacking of emails from the Ministry of Defense (Sedena) offers a novel angle on the agency's actions in this regard.
Among the documents that refer to the case are a letter from the head of the Army, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, in defense of one of the four imprisoned soldiers, Captain José Martínez Crespo, as well as exhaustive documents monitoring the statements of people linked to the investigation of the attack, case of the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas.
There are also answers to questions that the group of experts that the IACHR commissioned to Mexico for the case sent to the secretariat or a curious document that the deputy chief of Intelligence of the Defense General Staff sent to Tomás Zerón, in 2014, about mayors linked to crime in Guerrero.
These and other records show the interest of the Army and its commanders, both in the current administration and in the previous one, in understanding the effect that the
Ayotzinapa case
has had on the image of the institution.
On some occasions, the Secretariat itself has even asked the "advisors of the High Command", three civilians with a strong presence in the media, opinions on aspects of the investigation, anniversaries of the case or pronouncements on the result of independent investigations.
López Obrador and Luis Cresencio Sandoval, Secretary of National Defense, during the ceremony for "Flag Day", in February. Presidency (Cuartoscuro)
One of the documents that has attracted the most attention these days has been a letter that the General Secretary of Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, sent to the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in defense of Captain Crespo.
Arrested in November 2020, the Attorney General's Office then accused him of organized crime, an accusation now extended to the crime of forced disappearance.
Sent in January 2021, the letter recounts the conclusions of the visit that a general made to Crespo on those dates, a visit made, says Sandoval, "following his instructions."
Sandoval refers to López Obrador.
In the letter, Sandoval explains that Crespo "has a depressive state of mind, referring that he perceives little progress in the judicial process that follows him."
He adds that his subordinate “defines himself as an institutional man, since when he has been officially or unofficially interrogated, he has always shown a willingness to narrate the events of which he was aware or that by instructions received he participated, by making tours inside and in the immediate vicinity. of the city of Iguala, on the night of September 26 to 27, 2014″.
Sandoval collects part of Crespo's statements over the years, his presence at some of the scenes of the attack against the normalistas, the case of the corner of Juan N. Álvarez and Periférico, from where they took part of the 43, or the Cristina clinic , where a group of boys took refuge after the first attack in Juan N. Álvarez.
The general ignores, however, some aspects of Crespo's actions and the sanctions imposed by the Ministry itself for it, thus drawing a more friendly profile of the imprisoned military.
Sandoval does not say that Crespo was at the Barandilla command post on the night of the events, an Iguala police facility where detainees are held.
At this point, the investigators already know that part of the 43 disappeared passed through there, before they lost track.
For years, Crespo omitted his visit to Barandilla, a visit that he later justified with worldly reasons.
While dozens of policemen and criminals attacked students with bullets and disappeared several dozen, the military man assures that he went to the municipal police detention center to look for a lost motorcycle.
Crespo has always said that he did not see students there.
Due to the omission of the captain, who did not even report this visit in the official reports that he submits to the unit, the Secretary of Defense itself initiated a sanctioning procedure, as revealed by the group of experts of the IACHR in its latest report, presented in March, and published in full last week.
Encinas, “negative impact”
Among the rest of the documents on the Ayotzinapa case, several stand out, which can be cataloged under the heading monitoring and analysis of the press.
The most interesting is a database with hundreds of entries that collects negative opinions in the media from public figures about the Army in the framework of the Ayotzinapa case.
The winner, with 553 negative impacts, is Alejandro Encinas, current head of the presidential commission investigating the Ayotzinapa case.
Prepared by the company Efficiency Informativa, the same company sent the database to a Sedena email address, dn29_sintesis@sedena.gob.mx, in June 2019. At that time, the Ayotzinapa case commission was barely six months old.
The base collects negative opinions of the Army from May 2018 to June of the following year.
In the body of the email, a company worker writes: "In the case of Alejandro Encinas, all those where the official says that 'even the military' will be investigated, among other statements, were considered negative."
Under the category press analysis, different offices within Sedena have received analyzes and comments on the Ayotzinapa case, from journalists and lawyers whose presence is regular in the media.
This is the case, for example, of the lawyer Juan Velásquez, "advisor to the High Command," according to leaked documents.
In the papers of Sedena, the exchange of Velásquez with the secretariat is constant, in the previous administration and in the current one.
Sandoval, Secretary of National Defense, and José Rafael Ojeda Durán, Secretary of the Navy, together with lawyer Juan Velázquez (second from left to right), at a ceremony in which the latter was awarded an award, in 2019.Mario Jasso ( darkroom)
In a document sent to the “High Command Advisors Unit” in September 2015, a year after the attack against the normalistas, Velásquez refers to the demands of civil society, then he asked for the assistance of an “International Commission against Impunity and Corruption in Mexico”.
The lawyer writes: “In this regard, it is worth remembering the “overthrow” of the Guatemalan government, due to the corruption opinion of an international commission.
Here we go?
Do we want to lead outsiders to approve or disapprove government actions?
And if in one of those, they decide that the State or the Mexican Army were the ones that disappeared the 43 normalistas (amen to the thousands of disappeared) and that is why they should enter the barracks?
Communicators Juan Ibarrola and Javier Oliva, also advisors to the High Command, express themselves in a similar way.
The former writes, after the presentation of one of the reports by the group of experts, he points out in an analysis, for example: “Without a doubt it will be an 'omission', so it will be a matter of blaming the Army in this case”.
The second, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the attack, points out: "It is an indicator of how indisposed a small but well-organized group is, which, articulated around the relatives of the 43 normalistas, has managed to advance in alliances and positions" .
Answers to the expert group
Another interesting document is the text of the Army's response to the questions sent in January of last year by the IACHR group of experts.
Then, the team of investigators denounced the lack of collaboration of the agency, a knot that López Obrador himself has tried to undo several times over the years.
Since then, the case has taken several turns, the most important regarding the Army, the arrest of General José Rodríguez, for organized crime.
During a press conference last Thursday, the group of independent experts denounced the interference of the Army in the case.Mario Guzman Mario Guzmán (EFE)
In its questionnaire, the GIEI asks about military communications from the time of the attack, parts of the intelligence agents who worked on the ground and information on parts of the barracks and battalion structure, in the case of the GAOI, Internal Order Analysis Groups, that “they have the function of concentrating the information they receive from the Battalions, analyzing it and sending it to the upper echelon”, according to the Sedena response.
One of the highlights is the battery of questions about the investigations of the Military Prosecutor for the Ayotzinapa case and surrounding issues.
In a specific one, the group asks, "Is there one or some criminal structures that have been determined through the analysis of the Army on the criminal groups of Iguala, Mezcala, Tepecuacuilco, Huitzuco for the year 2014?"
In the response, two groups are briefly mentioned, but it omits mentioning others, for which it even had records.
This is the case of the "Atzcala armed group", a criminal group that operates between Mezcala and Atzcala, a municipality, the latter, in which the Prosecutor's Office and the commission of the case have carried out searches in recent months.
In June 2014, a representative of the Media Luna mining company sent Lieutenant Joel Gálvez, head of the information and intelligence platoon of the 27th Infantry Battalion of Iguala, at the time, a diagram of the structure of the criminal group.
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