Ayotzinapa shakes the country

Ayotzinapa has caused a political earthquake with constant aftershocks that reveal the cohabitation of the governing political class and organized crime. It has put all the institutions in disarray and revealed how violence is destroying Mexico. The public’s opinion of who is responsible for this crime is clear: “It was the State!”

José Rubén Alonso González

The Cocos tectonic plate in the Pacific Ocean south of the state of Guerrero continually pushes against the North American plate with repercussions in central Mexico that make the country one of the most earthquake-prone areas of the world. On the night of September 26-27, Guerrero’s Iguala municipality was the epicenter of an earthquake whose magnitude is still unclear but it has shaken the country to its core, with aftershocks in all sectors of society and even international repercussions. This earthquake has put the Mexican State, the governing class and official institutions in disarray because it has revealed the stark truth about modern-day Mexico.

How they “disappeared” them

On the afternoon of September 26, a group of students from the “Raúl Isidro Burgos” rural teacher training college in Ayotzinapa, a community of the Tixtla municipality in Guerrero, went by truck to Iguala to raise funds for their educational, cultural and political activities. One such activity was to participate in acts to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the October 2, 1968, Tlatelolco student massacre and oppose the launch of María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa’s bid to succeed her husband, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, as Iguala’s municipal president.

Leaving the city that night, they were intercepted by Iguala municipal police officers supported by Cocula municipal police at different points near the Mexican Army’s 27th Mounted Regiment and a federal police operational base. The police fired at the youths, killing three immediately and seriously injuring two more. At least another 43 were arrested and taken to police facilities. They then disappeared. According to the testimony of 22 Iguala municipal police and 14 Cocula officers arrested in connection with the incident, the young people were handed over to members of “Guerreros Unidos,” one of the chief organized crime groups in Guerrero and Morelos. Thirty-three days later, based on testimony by two detainees, the Attorney General’s Office announced that the students had been murdered, their bodies burnt and the remains dumped in a river.

“It was the State!”

The events caused immediate national and international outrage. Mexico became the center of attention, particularly for students from public and private institutions who expressed themselves through social media and took to the streets in a totally horizontal, leaderless movement. They called for strikes in universities and other education institutes and were supported by international solidarity with an increasing number of creative slogans such as those of the third #GlobalAction for Ayotzinapa on November 20: “What will a country harvest when it sows bodies?,” “It was the State!,” “They were taken alive, we want them back alive!,” “We aren’t all here, 43 of us are missing!,, “Wake up, we’re being massacred!,”, “I think, therefore I am disappeared,” “Being young and revolutionary is a death sentence in Mexico,” “Dignified rage. Justice for Ayotzi and the people,” “We don’t understand this dialogue,” “We are all Ayotzinapa,” “Don’t be indifferent to my pain,” “Justice for Ayotzinapa,” “The country has been turned on its head,” “They won’t disappear us,” “Stop state terrorism,” “They took everything from us, including fear,” “I don’t dance to the sound of repression,” “Tragedies don’t only happen at the theater,” “I’m a student and Ayotzinapa hurts me,” “Their anger is ours too,” “There’s no justice in my country!,” “Shoot ideas, not bullets,” “Neither forgive nor forget!,” “Assassins and police are the same scum!” and “The terror comes from the State!”

Ayotzinapa reopened the cracks where violence hides. The students weren’t the only missing people. Official and extra-official lists of disappeared, with and without names, reemerged. Edgar Cortez of the Mexican Human Rights and Democracy Institute declared, “Without doubt, the case of the missing 43 is set against the backdrop of thousands of people who have disappeared since the last presidential period. The official figure is more than 22,000 missing people. There are other higher estimates but even this official number is scandalous.”

Tlatlaya set a precedent

A few days before the Ayotzinapa affair, accounts circulated that contradicted official versions of an alleged confrontation between criminals and Army members in a grocery store in San Pedro Limón, a community of the municipality of Tlatlaya in Mexico state in which 22 people died the night of June 30. An Associated Press report questioned whether there actually had been such a confrontation. Survivors later testified that the dead were victims of an extrajudicial executions. With that the National Human Rights Commission intervened and found evidence that at
least 15 of the 22 dead had indeed been executed. It also found that evidence had been manipulated through pressure on witnesses by Mexico state governor Eruviel Ávila, successor to President Peña Nieto.

Peña Nieto:
There will be no impunity

After the Ayotzinapa affair had already become the subject of street protests, President Enrique Peña Nieto finally addressed the matter during a tour of Irapuato, Guanajuato, in central Mexico, mistakenly identifying Iguala as a state, not a municipality. This slip was later corrected in the official version of his declarations.

“Regrettably we can’t ignore the events that have unquestionably caused great outrage in the municipality of Iguala, in the state of Guerrero,” he said. “Last Monday, I spoke about and made clear to the public the instructions that the national government has given regarding this matter, which has caused consternation and outrage not only here in Mexico, but also in different parts of the world where people have expressed their condemnation and outrage about what happened in Iguala. This was a truly inhuman, virtually barbarous act that cannot distinguish Mexico nor can such events as those in Iguala happen. For that reason, I clearly indicated recently that I have met with the national government Public Security Cabinet to speed up our work so we can deepen the investigation and find those responsible. This act cannot go unpunished. In brief, there is no room for even the smallest degree of impunity.

“We have to deepen the investigation and, no matter what, find those responsible, those who by their negligence or deliberate acts allowed or covered up what happened in Iguala and unfortunately, if confirmed, the death of these young students. These events, the facts being brought to light, the discovery of bodies in the graves that have been found make clear the degree of barbarity and the inhuman character of this event in Iguala. This event is a stain on the collective, national struggle to bring greater progress and development to Mexico. It causes outrage, so the President of the Republic is the first to express his support for the justifiable demands for a full investigation and, more than anything, the identification of those responsible.

“These are the instructions I have given to the Security Cabinet members so they speed up their work, their investigations, and Mexican society can know very soon who was responsible for these painful, lamentable and simply unacceptable events. This is the national government’s firm commitment: to work diligently in full coordination with other government levels, by which I mean state and municipal, each assuming its responsibility.”

By calling on local governments to assume their responsibilities, the President was seen to be making an initial attempt to set limits on the federal government’s responsibilities.

“We demand an
immediate response”

A month after the events, on October 29, Peña Nieto received the missing students’ parents and other relatives in Los Pinos presidential residence. At the end of the meeting, he signed ten commitments and agreements and offered to renew the search plan for the students, establish a mixed independent commission to investigate the events and implement a program to restore the dignity of the country’s rural teacher training colleges as regards their infrastructure and other aspects, and provide them with technical participatory support, as well as interim measures requested by the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

A few days later, a video of the participation of one of the parents in the meeting with Peña Nieto was posted on YouTube. His speech summed up everyone’s feelings and the raison d’être of the rural teacher training colleges as he called on the President for action:

“My name is Felipe de la Cruz Sandoval. My son was involved in the events at Iguala. Thankfully, he was one of the few who escaped the police’s criminal actions.

“I hope you have listened carefully to the demands of each of the parents. In the first meeting we had with the interior secretary and the attorney general, they asked us to trust them. I replied that I couldn’t personally trust them. I hope they remember that I didn’t trust them and I still don’t. Why? Because more than 30 days have gone by with no results, despite all the efforts you say you are making. The truth is that the young people’s faces are here, and if my son hadn’t been talking to me when these acts were being committed, he too would be in the photo. Thank God he had the chance to call me just when they were being shot at. He was with his classmate, Aldo, the student who is now in a coma. When his friend fell wounded he started shouting that they were students.

“We have definitely reached the limit of our tolerance and patience. We are using our final recourse as Mexicans to demand that you, Mr. President, immediately respond, presenting the 43 missing youths to us.”

“They’ve killed potential teachers”

Sandoval continued: “What happens to the Mexican Army’s role when it meets young people full of enthusiasm to become professionals? If you don’t know what a rural teacher training college is, then I can tell you that the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching Training College has a history of creating rural teachers who go to work with the people in the most far-flung communities. They’ve killed potential teachers who could have helped in the country’s development. They destroyed their dream of becoming professionals and their parents’ dreams of a better life together with their children.

“I don’t believe you can’t give us an answer yet. How many days has the federal government waited to take up the case? Here, today, we are giving you two or three days, no more, to give us concrete results. The students aren’t in the mass graves. Definitely not. There are already too many bodies. Not 43, many more than that and to us that means that our children are alive. They are alive and we want to see them alive. Our agony has been going on a long time. If you now see the anger and desperation of each of the parents, I don’t think you are going to sleep easily anymore. There are 43 youths disappeared by force by members of the Iguala Preventive Police, with a municipal president you knew. You politicians know who each other is and get along very well. So Mr. President, we’re demanding, the Mexican people demand, that you provide immediate answers. If you don’t, if you’re unable to respond, we’ll have to appeal to international bodies.

“The first point that came out of our meeting with the interior secretary and attorney general about a month ago is the same thing we’re demanding today. More than 20+ days later the answer hasn’t changed: “There’s no news, we haven’t found them.” But there’s no real search. All the parents who have gone with them have told us they walk around a bit and come back without finding them. Starting from today we want you—if you truly accept your responsibility and that of the people who appointed you, because I didn’t vote that time—to definitively answer those who voted for you, because many people here voted for you trusting they were going to have a President of Mexico. This, then, is the demand: immediate answers. No more pretending to look for them in mass graves. They aren’t in the graves, they’re alive. Who took our children? The police.”

The fall of Iguala’s governing couple

A week earlier, on October 23, Guerrero governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero stepped down, formally requesting a leave of absence, following protests, demonstrations, highway roadblocks and fires that damaged Guerrero’s legislative and government buildings and shopping centers. The local congress designated Rogelio Ortega, the Autonomous University of Guerrero’s former secretary general, as interim governor in his place.

Six days after Peña Nieto’s meeting with the missing students’ relatives, the attorney general announced that Iguala’s now ex-municipal president José Luis Abarca and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda had been located and arrested at a house in Ixtapalapa, Federal District, which, like Guerrero, is governed by the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Abarca had requested a leave of absence from his position on September 30, three days after the students went missing. He promptly disappeared and a search began for him as a suspect in the murder of PRD member Arturo Hernández Corona back in May of last year. His wife was also sought in connection with an investigation into the financial operators of the criminal group “Los Beltrán Leyva.” Other investigations related to the couple were also begun.

In the opinion of the priest Alejandro Solalinde, the Abarcas were not actually arrested in the Federal District. He thinks they were arrested in Veracruz and subsequently “planted” in the Federal District. Images published by the attorney general of the arrest of the Abarcas and their transfer and presentation to the press have been posted on social media. In those pictures, it is notable that they had changed clothes, suggesting that the arrest had been “staged.”

“I’ve had enough of this”

Despite these two events—a political casualty and supposed arrests—in the pursuit of justice, social pressure and protests haven’t died down. Rather, the focus of attention has shifted from Guerrero to the Federal District, the presidential residence and the National Palace.

On November 7, just before Peña Nieto left for China and Australia, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam met again with the parents and other relatives of the missing students, this time in the hangar of the Iguala airport, to inform them about the investigations. He then went back to Mexico City where he announced the investigations’ findings: the students had been murdered, their bodies incinerated and the remains thrown into a river.

The press conference, which ended with the attorney general replying to the last question by saying “I’ve had enough of this,” led to thousands of candle-carrying young people descending on the Angel of the Independence monument in Mexico City to renew hope and demand justice. They took up the attorney general’s words “I’ve had enough of this,” directing them as a chant against him and Peña Nieto in front of the attorney general’s offices and in the Zócolo. A group of agitators that mixed with the crowd threw Molotov cocktails at the main doors of the National Palace, for some reason unguarded that night, causing them to crack.

By then, Peña Nieto, en route to China, took advantage of a layover in Alaska to condemn the violence: “It is unacceptable that anybody should use this tragedy to justify violence. You can’t demand justice with violence. I say again, Ayotzinapa is a call to unity, reflection, peace and harmony; to identify mechanisms that will let us overcome institutional weaknesses but, more than anything, to do that in peace and social harmony. We the Mexican people reject violence.”

A day later, both the Aristegui Noticias team and Proceso magazine published a feature on the luxurious home of Peña Nieto’s wife, Televisa soap opera actress Angélica Rivera. The house, valued at 86 million pesos (over US$5.8 million), was built by Grupo Higa, one of the companies that won the contract to build the fast train line from Mexico City to Querétaro and also did construction work for Peña Nieto in Mexico state when he was governor. The news caused more public outcry, mixed with ironic and mocking commentary.

“There are people who
want to provoke instability”

On November 16, on Peña Nieto’s return from Asia, where he had participated in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, he responded to a question about the attempt to set fire to the National Palace: “We will use all possible means for dialogue, reconciliation and openness to avoid the use of force to reestablish order. Force is the means of last resort but the State has the right to use it when all other means to establish order have failed. I am seeking and hope that it won’t be necessary for the government to have to act in this way in this case or for us to reach the point where we have to use the security forces.”

Two days later, on a tour of Mexico state, the President took a stronger position, complaining about the criticism of his wife because of her luxurious “white house.” In his view, the unrelenting public demonstrations were evidence of a desire to destabilize his nation-building project: “We have seen that, under cover of this pain, the parents’ suffering and the public consternation caused by the painful and horrific events that investigations have shown took place in Iguala, violent movements are trying to justify their protests under the shield of this pain. Protests whose objectives aren’t always clear. It would seem they are motivated by a desire to cause instability, to generate public disorder and, more than anything, to undermine the national project we have been promoting.”

This was the first time Peña Nieto had claimed to have a “national project.” After nearly two years in government, the only thing close to this is the Pact for Mexico signed on December 2, 2012, by the three main national political parties, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), National Action Party (PAN) and the PRD. It has three main lines of action: strengthening the State, democratizing the economy and politics by widening and effectively applying social rights, and the participation of citizens as key actors in public policy design, implementation and evaluation. These three lines of action have in fact led to constitutional reforms in education, energy, telecommunications, political and electoral transparency, justice, economic competition, and treasury and financial matters. What they lead to in practice remains to be seen.

“Peña, Mexico hates you!”

Public outrage and protest continued to grow. In the run-up to the 104th anniversary of the Mexican revolution on November 20, calls circulated on social networks for one more #GlobalAction for Ayotzinapa in solidarity with the parents of the missing students, who had begun an information caravan through the country the previous week that was due to end in the capital. In response, the Dept. of the Interior announced the cancellation of the traditional sports parade that terminates in the Zócalo in front of the National Palace. On the 20th, more than 250,000 mostly young people marched from different parts of Mexico City, with no major incidents. There were demonstrations in more than half of the country that centered their attention on Enrique Peña Nieto.

“There are dangerous
mafias in this country”

Two days later the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) issued a statement about the events in Ayotzinapa: “We know that while the country is governed by criminals led by the supreme paramilitary leader, Enrique Peña Nieto, those who raise awareness educating and defend education are murdered and disappeared and those who protect water supplies for heroic, ancient people like the Yaqui tribe are in jail. The Mexican government is trying to minimize the criminal repression against our student comrades as though they were just more crime victims, just as they have time and again throughout the country. Just a few more deaths to be reported by the media, but we peoples who have suffered many types of repression know that there are criminals in all the political parties, in the House and the Senate, in municipal presidencies and in government palaces.

“There are dangerous mafias in this country that call themselves the Mexican State. From their point of view we get in their way, those of us who are the peoples who fight, who have been faceless and whose faces have been ripped off to make sure we understand, we who are nobody, who see and suffer violence, who suffer multiple, simultaneous attacks, who know that something bad, very bad is happening in this county, something called war, which is being waged against everyone. It is a war that can be seen and is being suffered in its full dimensions by those at the bottom of society.”

The bishops speak:
“Enough is enough!”

On November 12, the Mexican bishops collectively addressed the issue and established their position during their second annual assembly: “We, the Mexican bishops, declare: Enough is enough! We want no more blood. We want no more deaths. We want no more disappearances. We want no more pain or shame. As Mexicans, we share the pain and suffering of the families whose children are dead or missing in Iguala and Tlatlaya along with the thousands of anonymous victims in different parts of our country. We add our voices to the widespread demands that truth and justice bring about a deep transformation of the institutional, judicial and political order in Mexico, ensuring that events like these are never again repeated.

“In the midst of this crisis, we find hope in the awakening of civil society that, as never before during recent years, has protested against corruption, impunity and the complicity of some public officials. We believe it is necessary to move from protest to proposals. Nobody should be waiting like a vulture to fill themselves on the remains of the country. We need a peaceful approach to ensure that everyone can participate and to build a country for everybody, prioritizing dialogue and transparent agreements, with no hidden interests.

“We are at a critical point. What is at stake is a true democracy that guarantees strengthened institutions, the rule of law and education, work and security for the younger generation that shouldn’t be denied a decent future. We are all part of the solution that requires us to renew our hearts and minds, to be capable of truly brotherly relationships, sincere friendship, harmony and solidarity.”

Even Pope Francis speaks

During a general audience on November 12, Pope Francis spoke for the second time about the case of the Ayotzinapa students: “”I’d like somehow to say that I am with the Mexicans, those present and those at home, in this painful moment of what is legally speaking disappearance, but we know, the murder of the students.” He called the killings “visible proof of the dramatic reality of crime that exists behind the selling and trafficking of drugs.”

The first time Pope Francis commented on the events shaking Mexico was two weeks earlier, at the end of his general audience in Saint Peter’s Square: “”Today, I’d like to say a prayer and lead your hearts towards the people of Mexico, which is suffering the disappearance of its students and so many other related problems. May our brotherly hearts stay close to them in prayer, during this time.”

The UN calls it “inconceivable”
and the US “worrisome”

On October 29, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the US government considers the Ayotzinapa case “worrisome” and should be investigated. The State Department had already demanded a “transparent investigation” at the beginning of the month.

For his part, Ariel Dulitzky, the Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, sees the Ayotzinapa case as “an extremely grave phenomenon” adding that it is “inconceivable that Mexico knows how much oil it exports but cannot account for the number of disappeared people.”

The epicenter:
Ayotzinapa teacher training college

The “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Rural Teacher Training College in Ayotzinapa is emblematic of these institutions. It was founded in 1926 through a program previously promoted by Education Secretary José Vasconcelos following the Mexican Revolution to increase literacy through cultural campaigns and the training of basic education teachers in the most marginalized areas of the country. Rural teacher training colleges were promoted Under President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), until more than 40 were established in all parts of Mexico. Only 14 are still operational and all have limited budgets and depend on local government funding following educational decentralization in Ernesto Zedillo’s administration (1994-2000).

Ayotzinapa has 39 teachers and 6 technical support staff for the 532 young people from peasant families who study there. It is common for the students to conduct fundraising activities to pay for their educational and cultural activities by approaching local people and highway travelers.

Ayotzinapa is a model of social struggle for Guerrero and Mexico in general. The rural teachers who trained there include Lucio Cabañas Barrientos (1938-1974), Genaro Vázquez Rojas (1931-1972) and Othón Salazar Ramírez (1924-2008). All three became revolutionary activists and both Vázquez and Cabañas became guerrilla fighters in the early seventies when Mexico was engaged in the “Dirty War” against urban and rural social and revolutionary movements.

Guerrero: So poor, so violent

Guerrero stands out among Mexico’s states in all negative indicators, according to the 2013 Mexican Democratic Development Index, which is coordinated by the Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana, an employers’ association, and promoted and financed by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and PoliLa. With a score of 1.9 out of 10 for the four areas rated—respect for political rights and civil liberties, institutional quality, political efficiency and the effective exercise of power to govern—it is in next to last place, better only than Tamaulipas.

Guerrero is one of the most violent and corrupt states in the country. With respect to security, it occupies the second worst place in the national ranking and has the highest percentage of “black numbers”: unreported crimes. According to the 2014 National Census of Victimization and Public Security Perception, conducted by the National Statistics and Geography Institute since 2011, 96.7% of crimes are not reported. In the remaining 3.3% of cases investigations are begun but only in 0.5% of the cases is the alleged author brought before a judge.

And to top off its record, according to observations and studies conducted from 1990 to 2012 by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, a decentralized body of the Federal Public Administration, Guerrero is the state with the second highest proportion of poor people: 69.7%, only less than Chiapas where the proportion is 74.7%.

Mexico is still shaking

The social and political earthquake caused by Ayotzinapa has not yet ended. Mexico is shaking and the aftershocks of the emergency generated by the “tectonic plates” of the cohabitation and alliance of the governing political class and organized crime have produced a permanent shock.

In 2015, there will be local elections in more than half of the states as well as elections to renew the 500 members of the federal House of Representatives. In nine of those states, including Guerrero, there will also be gubernatorial elections, and 16 local congresses, the Federal District assembly, 933 local councils and 16 borough councils in the Federal District will be renewed.

As well as the gubernatorial race, Guerrero will renew its 81 local councils and elect 46 representatives, 28 directly and 18 by proportional representation. Under the new electoral law, which is a product of the reform promoted by the Pact for Mexico, the National Electoral Institute (INE), nee Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), now has greater powers to observe and intervene in local elections from the make-up of the local electoral bodies to the management of the electoral process, which implies also being able to observe the selection of candidates.

How will these candidates for governor, local legislators, federal representatives and municipal governments ask for votes when the responsibility for current events is the system that maintains them, when the collective conscience has declared and repeated “it was the State”?

José Rubén Alonzo González is the head of the Social Sciences and Humanities Department of the Atemajac Valley University (UNIVA), Zapopan, Jalisco.

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