Disappearances in Mexico began when U.S. surrendered to Nazis
'Dirty war' was state terror, backed by U.S., against socialist movements
La Jornada
Resolving Crisis of Disappearances Can No Longer Be Delayed
By Mario Patrón - 22 de agosto
Just weeks before Claudia Sheinbaum is to be sworn in, the Mechanism for Truth and Historical Clarification (MEH), which examines the events of political violence and human rights violations that occurred during the period known as the dirty war, presented its report, It Was the State. Through extensive compilations of testimonies, rigorous technical-scientific investigations and a stubborn effort to find the truth amidst resistance and obstacles, the report presents the progress in documenting the human rights violations that occurred during that period, as well as recommendations for restitution and reparation measures for the victims.
What was presented there also represents compelling evidence of the widespread crisis of disappearances that has plagued the country since the second half of the 20th century. The report highlights how those counterinsurgency practices and strategies of the State and the armed forces operated during the time of the dirty war persist today in the disappearance of people not only carried out by State agents, but also by organized crime. With this, the crisis of disappearances that the current government could not effectively address updates many aspects that began in the 1960s.
What was presented there also represents compelling evidence of the widespread crisis of disappearances that has plagued the country since the second half of the 20th century.
Let's look at the official data. As of August 21, the count of missing people is 115,404, of which 101,365 occurred from the Felipe Calderón administration to date and 51,465 occurred in the current administration.
Felipe Calderon stole the 2006 election from Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He was succeeded in 2012 by Enrique Peña Nieto, a Satanist and closet homosexual, who also lost to AMLO but was put in power by corrupt structures.
We also know that the tragedy of disappearance is also a forensic tragedy. Since 2021, the Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico reported that there are more than 52,000 unidentified remains in mass graves and public cemeteries. Hence, the creation of an Extraordinary Forensic Identification Mechanism has been promoted, which, however, has already been abandoned by the authorities.
The above figures lead us to agree with the MEH's diagnosis regarding the magnitude of the disappearance crisis that the country is experiencing. Today, authentic institutional processes of truth and justice remain absent, while the State and its institutions continue to hinder investigations and access to crucial information, especially in the hands of the Mexican Army.
It is no coincidence that the same barriers to access to truth and justice are replicated in the Ayotzinapa case, which is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and in so many other cases of serious violations in the country whose investigation continues to be obstructed.
Today, what has become clear is that the great violations of human rights are brought to light thanks to the work of the victims and the organizations that support them. Faced with the largest documented humanitarian crisis in the country, it is once again the victims, organized civil society, and extraordinary work by independent journalism, such as that which recently brought to light the so-called “death flights,” that provide society with fragments of truth to advance in the effort to find truth and demand justice and non-repetition of the events.
As has been repeatedly shown, it is the searching mothers who find and unearth the bodies of the missing, and it is the collective voice that marches through the streets that names and demands the fulfillment of its responsibilities from a State that has not been able to cope with the magnitude of the crisis.
On August 30, the International Day of the Victims of Forced Disappearances will be commemorated, and in the imminent beginning of the next government, it is pertinent to insist on pointing out the light and dark in the agenda of disappearances of people in Mexico, characterized by the tireless work of the families of the victims.
On October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in, inheriting a crisis in the matter of disappearances in structural conditions little different from those that López Obrador received six years ago.
The attention to the crisis of disappearances in Mexico, especially of its victims, will have to be treated by Sheinbaum and her cabinet urgently, establishing clear and effective measures from the first moment; and with a different pattern from that followed in the current six-year term, incorporating the observations that both the MEH and the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for the Ayotzinapa case denounced at the time regarding the State's barriers and the neglected measures of restitution, reparation and non-repetition.
