Since August 19, a spectacular wave of arrests has shaken Mexico: in addition to drug traffickers, the nation’s former chief prosecutor Jesús Murillo Karam, as well as 64 police officers and soldiers have been arrested and charged in the case of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School, missing since September 26, 2014.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Almost eight years after this tragedy, which shook the whole world, the current arrests open a breach in the general impunity and the spiral of violence in Mexico.
While previous governments denied any involvement, especially for many cases among the 100,000 enforced disappearances recorded to date, the indictment of state agents up to the highest levels now makes it possible to officially qualify the disappearance of the 43 “State crime” students: this is what the special prosecutor for Ayotzinapa, Alejandro Encinas, appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) who came to power in 2018, said on Friday.
Opportunism
Some voices of the opposition see a gesture of opportunism by the AMLO government in these unexpected arrests, which have created quite a wave of shock. The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), which again became the international guarantor of the investigation in 2018 after a court ordered the reopening of the investigation following complaints from defendants who had made confessions under torture, does not was only informed of the arrests at the last minute.
The GIEI had, however, presented central evidence and had been awaiting arrest warrants since March 2022, with the parents and lawyers “of the 43”, as they say colloquially in Mexico. Perplexed at not having been warned, these parents, of peasant and indigenous origin, have become leading legal actors to find their children, as shown in the documentary Paving the way to justice. For Ayotzinapa students1 which I co-produced, however bluntly state that the arrest of the former prosecutor Murillo Karam, also responsible for torture, constitutes in itself an immense success in the attainment of truth and justice.
official lie
On his own, Murillo Karam indeed embodies an unparalleled symbol of state involvement in the case of the 43, emblematic of many other politically motivated enforced disappearances that previous governments have gone out of their way to present as being solely linked to organized crime.
The ex-prosecutor is thus the architect of an appalling official lie, presented under the government of ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto as being the “historical truth”. This official lie was based on fabricated evidence – revealed by the GIEI in March 2022 – and even went so far as to “identify” charred remains found in a dump as those of the 43, accusing the latter of being involved. in a war between drug traffickers.
Yet, as GIEI experts demonstrated in 2016 before being expelled from Mexico by the former president, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did the charred bodies in the dump not correspond to the DNA of the students, but the latter, far from being traffickers, were involved in various organizations, particularly for the environment. As their parents and lawyers have tirelessly maintained despite constant threats and violence forcing them to live in the Ayotzinapa school since 2014, the forced disappearance of the 43 was orchestrated by state agents, in alliance with their henchmen, because the activism of these young people was disturbing. The 43 were also trying to go to a national demonstration against impunity in Mexico City, to denounce the assassination of two of their companions in 2012.
Like thousands of people in Latin America, the 43 of Ayotzinapa have thus been victims of what is called the criminalization of the defense of rights.2which consists of portraying defenders as criminals, exposing them to violence.
Thus, the historic arrest of ex-prosecutor Murillo Karam and his accomplices for the tragedy of the 43 students has several major effects. Not only does the indictment of state agents shake the edifice of impunity in Mexico – a subject of concern for the Canadian government and many citizens – but the reasons that led to the forced disappearance of the 43 students are finally clear. unveiled.
With Latin America being the continent most affected by violence against human rights defenders, according to the 2021 UN Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, the truth about this case could also advance other important causes. Just days ago, another landmark decision, this time by the Supreme Court, ordered the search of military installations in Guerrero to find the remains of two other missing persons. There is therefore an unprecedented conjuncture in the fight against violence and for justice in Mexico, giving hope to parents who have faithfully come to Mexico City on the 26th of every month since September 2014, so that the world does not forget their children. and know the truth.
* The author is also director of the Violence, Criminalization and Democracy Observatory (OVCD)