The recent Government Report on Ayotzinapa announces in advance impunity for former President Enrique Peña Nieto, as well as for the Secretary of National Defense at that time, Salvador Cienfuegos, in addition to continuing to cover up the atrocious crimes and the unspeakable motives of the Army, the Navy and the government, in relation to the murder of six people and the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students [a "normal school" is a teachers college] in the city of Iguala, in the State of Guerrero, in 2014.

The fact that the current government is being forced to recognize that the so-called “Historical Truth” about the case was a vile lie knowingly constructed by the Peña Nieto government using torture, fabrications, disappearance of people and of evidence, is testimony to the strength of the tireless struggle of parents and many more in Mexico and in the world who continue to demand justice. The arrest of the former prosecutor and main public protagonist of the cynical “Historical Lie,” Jesús Murillo Karam, as well as several lower-level officials, is also testimony to that struggle, although it remains to be seen whether they will be seriously put on trial. It is a scandal that it has taken almost eight years since the crime and almost four years of the current supposed government of “change” to finally recognize facts that were known and documented for a long time.

The government announcement of impunity in advance for Peña Nieto and Cienfuegos is totally unacceptable. After presenting the government report, Alejandro Encinas [federal senator for the State of Mexico] stated that “there is no evidence proving responsibility” on their part. Although he later clarified that he was talking about participation in the events on the night of September 26, 2014, no one has indicated that Murillo Karam had participated directly in those events either, but he has already been arrested. On the other hand, regarding Peña and Cienfuegos, they did not find “evidence” on them. This is a clear attempt to give them impunity in advance for their indefensible criminal acts.

Peña Nieto, as president, constantly defended and repeated the lies of his government about Ayotzinapa. He appointed Tomás Zerón to the National Security Council after publicly verifying with video that, as head of the Criminal Investigation Agency and key agent in the cover-up, he conducted a hidden and illegal operation on the San Juan River—so as to “discover” the following day the bone from the normal school student Alejandro Mora—which he evidently planted the day before. How Zerón came to have that bone has never been investigated. It is inconceivable that all the forces that participated in the horrendous crime in Iguala and its subsequent cover-up (Army, Navy, Federal Police, federal Attorney General’s Office, etc.) may have acted without the knowledge or orders of the then head of state. Despite all the theater of the current government regarding “consultations” to supposedly prosecute former presidents, there is no indication to date of a real intent to prosecute Peña Nieto neither for Ayotzinapa, nor for the other crimes against humanity committed under his mandate, such as the massacres of Nochixtlán, Tlatlaya, Apatzingán, Tanhuato, and others.

Cienfuegos, as head of the Army, stood out for doing everything possible to deny access to military bases, cover up and destroy evidence, lying to Congress in 2014 that the Army had no information about the crime, when a body of evidence was being documented, part of which they continue to hide. The Army was the force capable of orchestrating the cover-up of the crime, it monitored everything that happened in real time and had been carrying out undercover operations against the Ayotzinapa students since beforehand. The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) has revealed a video from October 2014 that shows members of the Navy in an undercover operation in the apparent act of planting evidence in the Cocula dump, which a few hours later was “discovered” by the authorities. The GIEI also revealed evidence of an Army campaign to disqualify his work. Both the Navy and the Army, among others, participated in various acts of torture so as to fabricate evidence. However, the government report downplays the criminal role of the Army and Navy, reducing it to “omission” and “negligence.”

More importantly, the government Report obscures the motives behind the federal government’s massive conspiracy to cover up the truth about these crimes against humanity. It repeats the same thesis of the discredited “Historical Truth” that everything was due to a conflict and confusion between rival criminal gangs (Guerreros Unidos and Rojos) with the participation of local police and authorities. Although some members of Guerreros Unidos may have been motivated to act according to such a story, this does not show that this was the real motive behind the dramatic and ruthless attack, with the presence of the three levels of government, against whom all the main parties involved knew in real time were normal school students. The government report does not raise the necessary question: What need would the federal government, the Army and the Navy have to cover up the crimes of a criminal gang and local authorities? And who gave the order to “eliminate” the normal school students and then cover everything up? The struggle has to continue until the whole truth is known about what happened to all the normal school students, who did this under whose orders, who ordered the massive cover-up operation beginning the very night of the crime, and what were the motives for both of the crime and its cover-up.

There are at least two possible explanations for these crimes that the current administration has yet to investigate, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive:

• Political repression against normal school students: The Peña Nieto government followed in the footsteps of previous governments with the demonization and repression of students from rural normal schools for their well-known role as radical opposition. The federal and state police murdered two normal school students from Ayotzinapa on the Autopista del Sol in 2011, during the Calderón government. The Army had been carrying out operations against the students, even placing two informants among the Ayotzinapa students (GIEI Report III). The mayor of Iguala and the Guerreros Unidos themselves threatened them with reprisals if they returned, after a demonstration regarding the murder of social activist and leader Arturo Hernández Cardona in 2013. Under the current government of López Obrador, the National Guard violently repressed the normal school students and parents for the alleged “crime” of leafleting and collecting funds at a highway toll booth. López Obrador himself launched, in February 2022, the baseless accusation that there were “infiltrators” from “organized crime… in the leadership” of the Ayotzinapa normal school students, repeating the same lies from Peña Nieto.
• Cover-up of the central role of the Army in drug trafficking: The GIEI, unlike the government report, has been very insistent on the important role of the Army in all this and on the need to follow up on the investigation of the fifth bus seized by the normal school students, whose existence the government tried to deny for a long time. The bus could have been carrying a concealed shipment of drugs, which could be part of the reason for the ferocity of the attacks. It could also have exposed the prominent role of the Army (and the government) at all levels in drug trafficking and their collusion with organized crime, which has been an open secret in the State of Guerrero since long before that terrible night in Iguala. We must not forget that Cienfuegos himself was arrested in the United States for drug trafficking and was only saved by the intervention of López Obrador under clear pressure from the Mexican armed forces.

Even some bourgeois governments in Latin America have gone so far as to prosecute former presidents for their crimes, although, despite all that, the same system persists, essentially the same state and a continuity of crimes against the people even in those countries. The supposed government of “change” of López Obrador and Morena does not even get that far. We must continue fighting for justice for Ayotzinapa in the face of this latest attempt to cover up the truth of the facts and protect criminals at the highest level. Not only this report, but also the murders and repression against the people by the current government, which we have documented elsewhere (see the book Revolutionary Hope), show that, although faces change, people change, rhetoric changes, in essence it is still the same Army, the same Navy and the same repressive state at the service of the same capitalist system. There will only be real justice and real liberation for the people by overthrowing this reactionary state and forging another radically different state based on the revolutionary struggle of millions of people. Today more than ever, such a revolution is urgently necessary, a socialist revolution, guided by the New Communism. Everyone who is already fed up with so many crimes, lies and injustice should get into to knowing and preparing this liberatory revolution now.

Download the flyer in Spanish (pdf): Ayotzinapa-impunity.pdf

Aurora Roja, Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

August 20, 2022

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