On the night of March 7, the state police opened fire on the car in which four normalistas were traveling through Chilpancingo, students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School, companions of the 43 young people kidnapped on September 26, 2014 and missing since then. . It was the latest chapter in a long history of persecution and stigmatization against the center's students, farmers from the poorest Guerrero, known for their commitment to social struggles and the labor movement. That day the agents murdered Yanqui Kothan Gómez Peralta, a boy of only 23 years old, detained another and released the remaining two. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president of the Republic, condemned the homicide this Monday in his daily morning press conference: “There was an abuse of authority.”
López Obrador has thus distanced himself from the first version released by the police, which stated that the four students were traveling in a stolen van when the agents – who were later arrested – stopped them, the young people refused, opened fire on the Authorities and uniformed officers were forced to respond to the bullets. On the night of the murder, the president regretted the events and shared “what the police have said.” This Monday, the president acknowledged that, among other gaps in the police report, the murdered young man never fired a weapon. “There was an abuse of authority, I still don't want to say anything, but the young man didn't shoot, for example, so we have to see. All the expert reports have already been carried out and the file is now in the hands of the Attorney General's Office of the Republic. [FGR]. “We are not going to allow any interference or temptation to want to protect those responsible.”
The president has offered his condolences to the victim's loved ones: “Nothing is going to be fabricated to protect those responsible. “It hurt me a lot, it hurts a lot and we are going to act.” The last two weeks have seen a worsening of the relationship between López Obrador, the normalistas and the mothers and fathers of the 43 of Ayotzinapa. With the investigation into the disappearance of the young people stalled and with no signs of progress on the horizon, the relatives and colleagues of the victims have opted to redouble their presence on the streets to pressure the Government. The murder of Gómez Peralta was the culmination of an increasingly tense spiral between security forces and students.
One day before the murder, the normalistas broke down one of the doors of the National Palace in Mexico City with the help of a truck to demand the leader meet with them. Before, they had already broken into rallies of Claudia Sheinbaum, López Obrador's successor in Morena as the ruling party's candidate for the presidential elections on June 2; They threw firecrackers at the Senate of the capital and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or crashed a vehicle against the entrance of the Federal Arraigos Center to demand that the Executive attend to their demand: finding the 43 missing people almost 10 years later.
The normalistas and the relatives of the 43 demand that the Government deliver a series of military intelligence documents where, according to them, key information is found to be able to unravel the case. The Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) denies the existence of the files with the support of López Obrador. However, the independent group of experts (GIEI) that investigated the crime for years affirms that these reports exist and are being hidden by the Army. The GIEI ended up leaving Mexico in July, frustrated by Sedena's resistance to providing information, without which the investigations cannot emerge from a stalemate. Relatives accuse the president of siding with the military and abandoning the victims, even though solving the disappearance was one of his great campaign promises.
No dialogue
The demonstrations of the normalistas in recent weeks were focused on this disagreement, a way to increase muscle in the protests to loosen the hand of the military, which for the moment has not achieved its objectives. When the students broke down the door of the National Palace, López Obrador offered them to speak with the Undersecretary of the Interior, Arturo Medina, but the young people refused a meeting with anyone other than the president. Asked this Monday about a possible meeting, the president said that it will take place “later”, since he wants “a direct dialogue with them”, but he does not trust the lawyers who defend them.
The strategy of targeting victims' lawyers as the root of the problem is not new. López Obrador has used it repeatedly in recent years, criminalizing defenders for, in his words, being part of an alleged conspiracy against him. The lawyers are widely recognized nationally and internationally recognized professionals, with years of experience in the defense of human rights. Two of them, members of the Prodh Center, Santiago Aguirre and María Luis Aguilar, were spied on with the program Pegasus by the Army, as demonstrated by an investigation by Citizen Lab, the Network in Defense of Digital Rights, Social ICT and Article 19 last April.
“I don't have confidence in the lawyers and those from supposedly human rights organizations because they have distorted things and I have proof of what I am arguing,” the president said without showing any evidence. “I want to talk to them.” [los familiares]that they allow me to have this dialogue with them without any commitment to anything, I just want them to listen to me because I maintain that they do not have all the information and I want to inform them, it does not mean that they will accept my version (…) I wish to It is with all our heart that we find the young people and I am dedicated to that: I am conducting the investigation, doing everything,” López Obrador added.
After the murder of Gómez Peralta, the normalistas denounced that the state police manipulated the crime scene by moving the truck from its original position and placing weapons and drugs. From the first moment, they held the authorities responsible: “We hold the Government itself responsible for the manufacture of crimes and planting of weapons, the same thing they tried to do in 2011, with the same speech that our colleagues attacked the police officers and that they only “They responded.” In 2011, two other students, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, were murdered by police in Chilpancingo during a blockade of the Sol highway, one of their usual forms of protest. Another 41 young people were arrested and at least three others were injured. Three years later, 43 students were disappeared due to an alliance between the criminal group Guerreros Unidos and more police officers. Almost 10 years later, the victims are increasing and no one is solving the biggest state crime in the recent history of Mexico.
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