The Government's final arrest makes the families of Ayotzinapa uncomfortable

The end of the six-year term already appears on the horizon, while the Government is rushing to finish the pending issues, none as urgent as the Ayotzinapa case, which languishes between criticism and tensions. At the end of December, the Executive announced the opening of “all files” that the families of the 43 missing students considered necessary to further the investigation. This week, the families responded that the Government knows very well what information is needed and that, in any case, independent researchers must be the ones to review the documentary collection. The Government agreed to respond next Thursday.

This was made known this Wednesday to the new president of the presidential commission investigating the case, Félix Medina, Alejandro Encinas' replacement since October. Medina, who arrived an hour late to the meeting, verbalized the Government's offer, disclosed on December 29 in a statement from the Presidency. For the families, the offer is almost an insult, a trap by the Government, whose only interest is to take a photo with them in military installation archives. A way to change the image of failure of the Executive, installed in public opinion.

The disagreement comes from afar and has chapters to fill 20 seasons. In summary, the families of the 43 and their lawyers, supported until a few months ago by investigators from the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), demand the delivery of hundreds of military espionage documents. As the GIEI has explained these years, these documents would contain information on the communications of the criminal network that attacked the normalista students, during the attack, the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27, 2014, and the following days.

The demands of the families, their lawyers and the GIEI have run into the Army wall, guarded by the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who denies the existence of the required documents. This despite the detailed explanations that researchers have given over the years, about their possible location, about the attempts to hide them by members of the Armed Forces, and about their content. Not only that, the same presidential commission found and published two documents of this type a little more than two years ago, in which four alleged perpetrators spoke of the possible fate of part of the 43.

At Wednesday's meeting, the exchange was similar to previous occasions. Some actors changed, others were missing—the special prosecutor of the case, Rosendo Gómez Piedra, was not present—but in summary, the ideas that both parties handled were the same. Medina and his team, of which Félix Santana, Encinas' right-hand man, and link between the first and second stages of the commission, is still a part, pointed out that the Army has already delivered all the information it had. “The perception has been generated” that the Army has not cooperated, the officials said, but that is not the case, they added.

The families responded that it is not a matter of perception, but of facts. The documents exist, they said, and recalled the list sent to López Obrador at the end of last year, in which they detail, by number, each missing document. The families of the 43 then stated that, in any case, it should be the GIEI, integrated in its last stage by the Spanish Carlos Beristain and the Colombian Ángela Buitrago, which is in charge of reviewing any file.

The request upsets the commission and the Government, who were ambiguous in their initial offer. The return of the GIEI would imply returning to the situation in the middle of last year, when the group delivered its last report, in which it gave details of the missing documents, and criticized the attitude of the Government and the Army. Sources close to the group point out that the return would be unthinkable without very clear conditions, that its members enjoy immunity, given the prosecution of the Prosecutor's Office against Gómez Piedra's predecessor, Omar Gómez, absolute access to all files, and a new agreement. with the IACHR, the umbrella on which the GIEI depended.

In any case, the context would be very different. When the GIEI left, at the end of last summer, tired of running into the military wall, the figure of Encinas kept the bridge between the parties standing, an impossible balance, in which he accepted and denied the criticism of the families of the 43 , in an attempt to buy time, while a solution appeared.

The final departure of Encinas, worn out and hurt by the criticism received from the National Palace and from the same group of relatives, has paid for the subsequent isolation. The families of the 43 have no faith in prosecutor Gómez Piedra. Nor in Medina, a man close to the Secretary of Security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, close, in turn, to López Obrador. The official's response to the families' request will determine the future of the case and the final months of the six-year term.

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