AMLO broke his promise to the families of the disappeared

Mexico City-In the early evening of September 26, in the last part of the a seven-day series of demonstrations Under the slogan “10 years of impunity”, the families of the 43 forcibly disappeared students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College testified in front of the National Palace. Rain from Hurricane John, which battered their homes in the southeastern state of Guerrero, reached the nation’s capital, pelting cold and fiercely on people who chanted, “It was the army!” and “It was the state!”

It was for the families of the young men passed through the city to the palace, the official residence of the president, accompanied by thousands of supportersmany of whom are missing family members. Heavy metal barricades surrounded the large building, keeping protesters away from its facade. That morning, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), once a trusted ally of the Ayotzinapa parents, he said the barricades were needed to protect the palace from damage by bad actors.

The facts of the Ayotzinapa case so far are that on the night of September 26, 2014 and the following morning, municipal, state and federal police, along with soldiers from the Mexican Army and members of the Guerreros Unidos organized crime network, attacked six buses in the city Iguala. Five buses were temporarily driven by students from the all-male teachers college to Mexico City to commemorate the October 2nd anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. The motives behind the Iguala attack are disputed, but independent investigators are investigating they claim that the police may have tried to protect the heroin hidden on one of the commando buses and intended for sale in the United States.

The remains of only three students have been identified, the fate of the other 43 is still unknown. The Mexican military, which documented the attack in real time, has information on where they are. The National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA), which oversees the army, refuses to hand it over 800 folios of information that the international group of expert jurors appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights requested. AMLO’s government, as well as that of his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, both defended SEDENA against it. No verdict was reached.

“Obrador has betrayed the trust that we, the parents, have placed in him, and he has turned his back on the Ayotzinapa case by protecting the army,” said Hilda Legideño, mother of Jorge Antonio Tizapa Legideño, as she took the microphone in front of a crowd in Mexico City. .

“He will be an accomplice to those who disappeared our children.”

In 2014, when the case made national headlines, Ayotzinapa quickly became a symbol of both the crisis of enforced disappearances in Mexico and the collective fight against them. The parents of the 43 gathered those who had suffered the disappearance of their child or relative and catalyzed the formation of the first National Search Brigades of family members who search for the remains of the disappeared in secret graves. The Ayotzinapa school is one of the socialist schools in Mexico escuelas normales ruralescommunity-based, politically cohesive education and training systems whose solidarity and organization are reflected in the coordinated search for the missing.

Mario González took the microphone after César Manuel González Hernández’s father, Legideño, addressed AMLO directly. him a “vulture,” saying, “You have placed yourself at the feet of the army of which you are so proud…. You have turned your back on us fathers and mothers whose children have been disappeared by the state.”

The visceral reports of many parents of the missing students make their point clear: they were played by AMLO, who made their case “a central human rights commitment of his government,” as former special prosecutor Omar Gómez Trejo wrote last week. El Faro. They trusted that the president and his officials would give them the truth about what happened to their children and demand compensation for their violent abduction. Despite the government’s continuous backsliding and attempts multiple characters in order to share their united front, the parents continued to cooperate with the government. Until August of this year, they attended meetings with officials in Mexico City and posed for him photography operations with AMLO like the perpetrators was arrested and he was released from prisonor in that case Former security chief Tomas ZeronHe fled to Israel to avoid arrest.

“Expectations have been raised to win justice in this government, to find out what happened,” said Vidulfo Rosales, lawyer and spokesman for the families. said the local press before his anniversary. After “much optimism” from the parents, when AMLO’s mandate ends, they are left with “disappointment and despair”.