Mexico’s missing students: ‘Eight years of not knowing’

Eight years after Mexico was shocked by the disappearance of 43 students at the hands of police officers, the often-fraught investigation was finally showing signs of progress.

A truth commission formed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador released a report in August detailing a widespread operation that targeted the teacher-trainees. It called the attack — one of Mexico’s most notorious human rights atrocities of the past 40 years — a “state crime” in which federal and state officials, along with the army, either participated in the attack or failed to intervene.

Both the report from the commission, and a separate one from international experts sponsored by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission released last month, pointed an accusing finger at the army, which has been an important ally of López Obrador since he took office in late 2018.

The reports established that state actors colluded with the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel in the attack, which occurred in the city of Iguala, 190km south of Mexico City in Guerrero state, Mexico’s heroin-producing heartland.

The truth commission also found the students were monitored by police and soldiers from the moment they left their college and during the attack, with soldiers and state police failing to intervene. It concluded there was little chance the students were still alive, though their whereabouts remains a mystery. 

“We know a little more about what happened,” said Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer for the students’ families. “We know it was a large-scale operation, in which the authorities participated.”

After the report’s release more than 80 arrest warrants were issued. Jesús Murillo Karam, a former attorney-general, was detained on charges of torture and forced disappearance in connection with the initial investigation in the attacks. He has pleaded not guilty.

But progress in the investigation seems to have stalled since then. The federal prosecutor’s office subsequently withdrew 21 of the arrest warrants, including 16 for soldiers, and special prosecutor Omar Gómez Trejo, who led the criminal investigation, resigned last week.

López Obrador attributed the departure to Gómez Trejo’s disagreement with “the procedures for approving the arrest warrants.” No one has ever been convicted for their involvement in the attack on the students from the Ayotzinapa normal school.

This has stoked disquiet in Mexico and raised fears that the cover-up will continue in a case that has provoked unusually intense outrage in a country seemingly inured to the bloodletting of the past 15 years.

It also raised questions over López Obrador’s commitment to solve the case, while highlighting the perils of his increasingly close relationship with Mexico’s military, which investigators and the students’ families accuse of failing to fully co-operate with their inquiries.

The outside experts’ report said the army violated orders from López Obrador by blocking access to its intelligence files. They also accused the federal prosecutor’s office of hindering the investigation.

The setbacks have dismayed the students’ families and Mexican society more broadly, while offering a reminder of the country’s rampant impunity.

“They’re engaging in the same pattern of lies, closing doors in our face and receiving us with tear gas,” said Cristina Bautista, whose son Benjamín Asencio Bautista was among the missing students. “It’s been eight years of not knowing anything about our sons. What happened to them? Where they are? Those are our simple questions.”

Mexico’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The army’s actions on September 26, 2014, the night of the attack, have long been in question.

The 43 students who disappeared had commandeered buses to attend a protest on the anniversary of a previous atrocity — soldiers attacking student protesters on the eve of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City — when they were kidnapped by local police acting in co-operation with the Guerreros Unidos, according to the truth commission.

The truth commission found that the military had an informant among the students, but failed to activate search protocols for missing personnel after the attack.

Alejandro Encinas, deputy minister responsible for human rights, announced the arrest of an army colonel in August for allegedly ordering the execution of six students, who were still alive for days after the attack. “I’ll deal with the lads,” the colonel reputedly said, according to Encinas.

But Rosales, the lawyer for the victims’ families, says the delays have raised suspicions that the army is closing ranks.

“There was political will, which was reflected in the truth commission, special prosecutor’s office and the advances in the case,” Rosales said. “But when the investigation bumped up against the military, that political will disappeared.”

López Obrador met with parents of the 43 students during his 2018 campaign and promised to get to the bottom of the attacks. One of his first acts upon taking office later that year was signing a decree establishing the truth commission.

But in the wake of the report he has quickly come to the army’s defence, using his morning press conference to denounce critics of wanting to “provoke rebellion in the army.”

The president has relied heavily on the armed forces through his administration, tasking them with everything from building and managing airports to running seaports and the customs service to operating a national park.

Analysts describe a dilemma for the president: allow the investigation to proceed or protect the military — an oft-hermetic institution with a history of resisting civilian oversight. 

“It seems those betting on a cover-up are winning,” said Aldo Muñoz, political science professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State. “They’re hoping to manage the crisis until the end of the president’s term.”