Violence in Mexico has many faces, but there are terrible monuments in its honor that will remain as milestones in history. This is the case of Ayotzinapa, the probable murder of 43 students from a school in the mountains of Guerrero on the night of September 26 and the morning of September 27, 2014. One of the most dramatic and darkest cases in the recent history of the country.
With the arrival of the current government, the so-called “historical truth” was promised to be reversed, the story about what happened during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, under the supervision of the prosecutor, then, Jesús Murillo Karam. A truth that solved nothing and that this week has sent the prosecutor to jail, accused of kidnapping, torture and obstruction of justice.
There are still no bodies, just one bone that was identified as three of the students. But the arrest of the former prosecutor is a giant step for the relatives, years and years of searching for their loved ones and waiting for a just punishment for such a heinous event. Landfills were cleared, trails were searched, rivers were traversed, and there was no evidence of the alleged crime, false or not, that were not investigated, but everything was still waterlogged in an official opacity that was entangled in the military archives, among other indecipherable extremes.
This week, the Government, through Alejandro Encinas, Undersecretary for Human Rights, placed the matter where everyone suspected but no one wanted to admit: “There are no signs that they are alive.” Immediately afterward, the arrest of Murillo Karam and the arrest warrant for 20 military commanders and troops were announced. What about Pena Nieto? The President of the Government, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has said that “it will be difficult” for the former president, who lives in Spain, to be prosecuted. It will not be easy to imprison the former prosecutor either, but the most important steps in years are being taken now, in what seems like a new chapter that could bring justice to dozens of families, which is perhaps the only thing they are waiting for.
Ayotzinapa is a symbol of the dark collusion between power and crime that seems to have no end in Mexico. An unhappy emblem of the dramatic handling of the Mexican Army and the ease with which 43 people can disappear in one night without leaving a trace of them or clues to do justice.
By Carmen Morán Breña
Violence in Mexico has many faces, but there are terrible monuments in its honor that will remain as milestones in history. This is the . . .
