Infamous 15 years have passed since the disappearance of two leading members of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR): Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez, brother of the then guerrilla leader, Tiburcio Cruz Sánchez, and Edmundo Reyes Amaya. They are part of the more than 100,250 people who have disappeared since 1964 but, unlike the vast majority, it is known what happened to them, but their whereabouts are unknown. The most serious thing is that after so many years, the impunity of this crime remains.
On February 15, 2009, details of what happened and how the crime was covered up were revealed in this space, which today, with the will of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to solve the problem of the disappeared, has a great opportunity to clarify the except these two cases. As a memory aid, these are excerpts from that complaint:
“The case of the disappearance of two members of the EPR is solved. His whereabouts, not yet. Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya, two of the most important guerrilla leaders, were detained in Oaxaca during an operation planned and executed by the State Ministerial Police, with the support of the Judicial Police and the military, and forcibly disappeared. what has not been seen since the times of the dirty war.
“Multiple testimonies allowed us to reconstruct what happened to them on the afternoon of May 24, 2007, when they were detained in an operation in the Historic Center of Oaxaca, near the Hotel El Árbol. The government of Ulises Ruiz always said that this action was against a wanted criminal in Chiapas, not against the two EPR cadres. The investigation of the facts, on the other hand, reveals a planning and a direct operation against Cruz Sánchez and Reyes Amaya, and is integrated into a recommendation of the National Human Rights Commission.
“Cruz Sánchez and Reyes Amaya had arrived in Oaxaca days before to indoctrinate dissident teachers. The EPR had been very active during the long sit-in of teachers in Oaxaca, during which they carried out urban guerrilla exercises. The investigation confirms some details that the EPR provided in communications during 2007 and 2008, where it revealed that its cadres reported to the guerrilla security apparatus on the morning of the 24th before going to a work meeting. When they finished, they were transferred near the Hotel El Árbol, between 5 and 7 p.m., since they would have another session in the afternoon in that area.
“The next security communication, the morning of May 25, was no longer made. Clothes that had to be collected at a clandestine point were also not collected. From that same day, the EPR began to ask all its sections in the country about the whereabouts of both. For two weeks internal communication in the EPR was intense, and in all cases, unsuccessful. Dissident groups of the EPR also publicly demanded the appearance of the EPERRistas and, in this way, distanced themselves from any accusation of settling scores, as the federal government wanted to believe at one point.
“The high frequency of the communications had a very clear reason. Cruz Sánchez was not only the brother of Tiburcio Cruz Sánchez, better known as Francisco Cerezo Quiroz, commander in chief of the EPR, but he was also a key player within the guerrilla organization: he was the personal link between the three families that control and direct the EPR. , the Canseco Ruizes, the Cruz Sánchez and the Cirigo Vázquez, and that without being in conflict, they have differences due to the handling of the money obtained from high-impact kidnappings in the past decade —in the case of the first two—, and due to the gradual abandonment of the armed struggle to venture into politics by legal means —in the case of the third—.
“The coup against Cruz Sánchez went to the heart of the EPR General Command. In the first statement denouncing the arrest, on June 2, he pointed out that the Oaxaca Police had (them), and that they were tortured by state, federal and military agents. Juan José Díaz Bermúdez, director of the Punto y Aparte portal in Oaxaca, one of the journalists who has followed the case most closely, revealed at the time that some 200 elements participated in the operation, headed by Pedro Hernández, who was in charge of the Ministerial Police; by Alejandro Barrita, who headed a special group of the Industrial Banking Police, and by a colonel that he only identified as ‘Suárez’, who headed an Army unit.
“The investigation on which the CNDH (issued) its recommendation directly identifies the Ministerial Police as the head responsible for the forced disappearance of Cruz Sánchez and Reyes Amaya, but also includes other state security corporations, and military personnel from the VIII Military Region, headed at that time by General Juan Alfredo Oropeza Garnica. The investigations open doors that were thought closed, because several of those directly involved were killed or exonerated.
“Hernandez is in the latter case, detained and indicted by the Attorney General’s Office during the federal investigation, but released, ‘due to lack of evidence,’ in July 2008. Barrita was murdered in January (2008). , and the same happened with another key piece of the puzzle, Aristeo López Martínez, former head of the state Judicial Police and former coordinator of municipal Public Security. According to Bermúdez, López Martínez was a ‘protected witness’ for the PGR in the case of the disappeared EPERRistas, and who allegedly revealed that he saw them alive at the ‘Los Pinos’ base of the state Judicial Police”.
President Felipe Calderón never did anything to solve it. The then general
Secretary of Defense, Guillermo Galván, less. Oropeza Garnica told me that he was innocent, and blamed the Ruiz government. The former governor put the blame back on the military. Fuenteovejuna. Stop. López Obrador is taking a long time to close this case.
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