In analyzing the factors that encourage the persistence of violence in Mexico, the report of the Mechanism for Truth and Historical Clarification states that one has been the presence of the Armed Forces in regions where they have remained in a “historical” manner, such as the state of Chihuahua.
“One of the aspects that characterizes the continuity of violence in Mexico is the presence of the Armed Forces (FFAA) in key regions, as well as their presence in territories that they have historically occupied and that have affected the social dynamics of peasant, indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities in states such as Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, among others,” says the report “It Was the State (1965-1990),” presented in Mexico City.
“The counterinsurgency plans carried out by the Mexican Army were the prelude to drugging the territories; the drug policy was linked to the land business. Where there was militarization in the 1970s, today there is drug trafficking, affecting health, education, freedom of movement, access to quality public services, and the customs of girls, boys, women, and men,” the report adds in the section entitled “Why does it continue to happen? Factors in the persistence of state violence after 1990.” In the same volume, which analyzes other “contemporary cases” of human rights violations in militarized regions for decades – such as the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero in 2014 –, it includes the patrols deployed in Ciudad Juárez starting during the Felipe Calderón administration. “In Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, 12% of homicides nationwide are recorded. There is a great deal of neglect and inequality, as well as a strong presence of armed groups,” he says. “Despite its dense scenario, the federal Executive decided to maintain the state of exception (ten years after its arrival) since the ‘War against Organized Crime’ that in reality did not impact all criminal groups with the same force and that, due to the weakness of the public ministries to investigate, deploy information and resolve cases, it was observed how reports of disappearances increased as well as the participation of the population in the search for missing persons,” he adds. Regarding the deployment at the national level, the same volume states that “the so-called war against drug trafficking launched by Felipe Calderón, which sought to subdue organized crime groups through the excessive use of force, without addressing the social problems that led many young people to join the ranks of drug traffickers, turned out to be a disastrous strategy, which militarized public security without managing to end the violence of the cartels, and which allowed the commission of serious violations of human rights.” Between 2006 and 2012, the report adds, some 96 thousand military personnel were involved in national security tasks in the country and more than 50 thousand civilians were detained by military personnel, in many cases arbitrarily. The Mechanism is part of the “Commission for Access to the Truth, Historical Clarification and the Promotion of Justice for Serious Human Rights Violations Committed from 1965 to 1990,” installed by the federal government in December 2021. The report, presented last Friday the 16th, documents various contexts of serious human rights violations recorded in those decades, at least two with a significant presence in the state of Chihuahua, such as the fight against drug trafficking since the 1970s and the counterinsurgency policy developed especially after the assault on the Madera military barracks on September 23, 1965. “The assault on the Madera barracks was not only a turning point for political-military organizations and an example for other movements in the process of radicalization, it also set the tone for the implementation of new anti-subversive strategies. Thus, in mid-1965, the newcomer from the International Police Academy, Miguel Nazar Haro, was charged with creating a special group of agents whose mission was to investigate the support networks for the attackers of the barracks. It was then that the special group C-047 emerged, which worked directly for the director of the DFS,” he says in volume 2, when reporting on the emergence and radicalization of social movements and struggles in the country.
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