A group of normalistas from Ayotzinapa, the students who were companions of the 43 young people who disappeared almost 10 years ago in the city of Iguala, Guerrero, demolished one of the doors of the National Palace, the president's residence and the center this Wednesday morning. symbolic of the Executive power.
The protesters, who thus intend to pressure the Government so that Andrés Manuel López Obrador meets with them and try to unblock the investigation into the kidnapping of the 43 students, have used a van from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) that was parked in the street as a battering ram to break down the gate.
The students have broken the vehicle's windows, removed the handbrake and pushed the car again and again until the wooden door gave way.
Inside the National Palace was López Obrador who, like every day, appeared before the press on his popular Mañanera.
At the time the young people tried to break into the building, the president was still live.
The military police guarding the place fired tear gas to disperse the protesters.
Smoke has filled the flank of the Palace while the guards set up a human barricade, protected by shields and batons.
The president has stated that the protesters will be attended to by the Undersecretary of the Interior, Arturo Medina.
Asked by a reporter present in La Mañanera, López Obrador has indicated that he is not going to meet personally with the normalistas.
“No, I am analyzing and conducting everything because what matters to me is finding the young people and the attitude, not of the parents, but of the advisors and the organizations that supposedly defend human rights, is an attitude at best. The political cases are very confrontational against us, provocative, and we do not want confrontation at all.
Just tell the parents that we are dedicated and that we are making great progress in the research.”
The relationship between the relatives of the 43 students who disappeared on September 26, 2014 and López Obrador is going through one of its worst moments.
The president, who assured as an electoral promise that during his Administration he would find the young people, harshly attacked while he was in the opposition against the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) for the irregularities in the investigation.
However, with only three months remaining in his six-year term, López Obrador has not made substantial progress in the case.
On the contrary, he has fallen out with the fathers and mothers of Ayotzinapa, who, after the failure of the dialogue, have redoubled their presence in the streets to pressure the Executive.
The victims' relatives demand that the Government hand them over hundreds of military espionage documents that, according to them, are key to advancing the stalled investigation.
The Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) denies the existence of said files, despite the fact that the independent group of experts (GIEI) that has investigated the case affirms that they are in the possession of the military.
The GIEI ended up leaving Mexico in July, frustrated by the Army's resistance to providing information.
López Obrador, who has characterized his mandate by harsh media opposition to voices critical of his management, has not left without attacking even the fathers and mothers of the kidnapped students or the associations in defense of human rights that support them.
This Wednesday, the president lamented that the relatives are being “manipulated” by a conservative plot, a mix of business, “conservative” and political powers, whose only objective, always according to López Obrador, is to take advantage of any opportunity to attack his Government. .
“What is happening is that they are being manipulated by the group headed by [independent senator Emilio] Álvarez Ycaza, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS [Organization of American States], right-wing conservative groups supported by foreign governments that What they want is to harm us politically speaking,” the president charged.
“What they want is not for us to come to know the truth, and for justice to be done, but that they already have it as a flag against us.
The parents don't even have all the information because the lawyers prohibit them from talking to us.
You know that I sent a report to each of the fathers and mothers and they did not want to receive them because the lawyers forbade it.
What we want is to know the truth and we are going to achieve it, I have confidence in that, and we are going to find the young people, which is the most important thing, but this is something else, this has other purposes,” López Obrador said.
The associations to which the president refers, such as the Prodh Center, are widely recognized nationally and internationally for their work in the defense of human rights.
Two of the Prodh lawyers, Santiago Aguirre and María Luis Aguilar, with an impeccable track record in their field and advisors to the families of Ayotzinapa, were spied on with the
Pegasus
program by the Army, as demonstrated by an investigation by Citizen Lab, the Internet in Defense of Digital Rights, Social ICT and Article 19 last April.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter
and the
WhatsApp channel
and receive all the key information on current events in this country.