The former municipal president of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, may be the next released from the Ayotzinapa case. He is still in prison for organized crime but was exonerated of the crime regarding the kidnapping of the young people. Yesterday we said that it was an incomprehensible judicial resolution. On Wednesday, General José Rodríguez Pérez was arrested, accused, without a single piece of evidence against him by the specialized prosecutor’s office and Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, of having participated in and ordered the kidnapping and murder of the young people of Ayotzinapa. Tuesday and Wednesday, by the way, a group of alleged students from Ayotzinapa attacked the Iguala and Chilpancingo military barracks, committing all kinds of acts of vandalism, as they have done before, during and after the events of September 26, 2014, with absolute impunity and without suffering even a statement against him.
The story of Abarca that we began yesterday is told in detail in the book La Noche de Iguala (Cal y Arena, 2018). For the Abarca-María de losAngeles Pineda couple, the presence of students in the municipality was not new: on June 3, 2013, the normalistas had violently taken over the Municipal Palace to demand the presentation alive of the then-disappeared Arturo Hernández Cardona, leader of the Popular Unity organization of Guerrero with which the normal students had become political allies.
That day, they set fire to the building, knocked down doors and defaced walls. Abarca was the main suspect in the disappearance of Hernández Cardona, who had been kidnapped four days earlier, on May 30, 2013, along with Félix Rafael Banderas Román and Ángel Román Ramírez, who were also members of the Izquierda Democrática Nacional current of the Partido of the Democratic Revolution (of which René Bejarano is the founder).
Their bodies were found shot to death and with traces of torture in the municipality of Tepecoacuilco. Four other people who were with them, Héctor Arroyo Delgado, Efraín Amates Luna, Gregorio Dante Cervantes and Nicolás Mendoza Villa, managed to escape from their captors.
The breaking point between Hernández Cardona and Abarca took place on April 1, 2013, in a meeting with the council. That day the Popular Unity, which brought together 15 associations of peasants and settlers from irregular settlements in Iguala, demanded the resignation of Abarca’s relatives (there were more than 30 working in the municipality). The meeting ended badly. Both starred in another heated discussion on the night of May 29, 2013, also in the town hall. The group demanded the delivery of 100 tons of fertilizer to the peasant organizations. The city council assured that the product had already been delivered. Hernández Cardona and his companions accused Abarca of being corrupt and a mercenary.
Furious, José Luis Abarca left the meeting calling out mothers and threatening Hernández Cardona, who once again held the Mayor of Iguala responsible for what might happen to him in the future.
After the meeting, Hernández Cardona organized a demonstration on the Autopista del Sol so that their demands could be met. It was the last place where family and friends saw Hernández Cardona alive, on Thursday, May 30, 2013. That day he was kidnapped with his collaborators.
According to a reconstruction made from the ministerial declaration of the survivor Nicolás Mendoza Villa, Abarca, aided by his then Secretary of Public Security, Felipe Flores Velázquez, murdered Hernández Cardona. Félix Rafael Balderas Román tried to escape, but he got stuck in a barbed wire fence and Abarca’s accomplices killed him with blows and stones.
The rest of the survivors were subjected to torture and interrogation. After a call received by the people of Flores Velázquez, they took the bodies out and put them in a truck along with the other hostages. “They put us on top of the bodies and placed a checkered blanket on us… they took us to Mezcala (55 kilometers from Iguala), there they dumped the bodies… when they got us out of the truck, Ángel Román Ramírez tried to escape , but one of the subjects shot him and he fell dead,” said Mendoza Villa. Exactly the same mode of operation as with the youth of Ayotzinapa.
On June 12, 2013, the PGR initiated a preliminary investigation against Abarca and sent three volumes to the Office of the Special Prosecutor for the Investigation of Organized Crime to take charge of the investigation. Since then, the fact that alleged members of Los Rojos, the rival gang of Guerreros Unidos, was infiltrated in the protests carried out by the Unidad Popular against the municipal government, infiltrated by Guerreros Unidos, was investigated. Nothing happened. A year later it was the Night of Iguala.
Today, Abarca has been exonerated from the kidnapping of the young people. The special prosecutor’s office that yesterday regretted that exoneration did nothing to prevent it, nor did it prevent the release of another 70 responsible for the kidnapping, already released, including Corporal Gil, who has become a star witness for that prosecution. General Rodríguez Pérez was arrested although there is no evidence against him. The barracks continue to be vandalized. And tomorrow will be the military parade where some will continue to think, perhaps, that not a single offense has been committed against the armed forces in recent weeks.
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