A judge from Tamaulipas, in northeastern Mexico, has sentenced 11 police officers to 50 years in prison for the murder almost three years ago of 19 people, most of them migrants, in the municipality of Camargo. The judge has also sentenced another agent, a collaborator of the local Prosecutor’s Office, to 19 years for abuse of authority and crimes against the administration of Justice. Thus the first circle of justice of the Camargo case, a milestone in the judicial history in Mexico, which has seen for years the indiscriminate attack against migrants who cross the country, in search of the border with the United States.
One circle closes, but others open. After five months, the trial that is now ending leaves pending the possible involvement of another 12 police officers, present on the day of the events at the scene of the attack, according to the collaborating agent, Ismael Vásquez León. So far, the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office has not reported whether it has requested their arrest or if it is at least investigating them. Nor has he said whether the agents continue to work for the Tamaulipas Public Security Secretariat.
In any case, the judge’s ruling closes a decade of injustices against the migrant population in the country. Registered in January 2021, the Camargo case It occurred ten years after the San Fernando massacre, also in Tamaulipas. Then, criminals murdered 72 migrants in a warehouse on the outskirts of the town, just a few hundred kilometers south of Camargo. The following year, criminals disappeared dozens of people, Mexicans and foreigners, in the same municipality. At least 193 bodies appeared in graves between April and May 2011.
In the cases of San Fernando, reporters and authorities have pointed out that the dispute between criminal groups in the area trapped the migrant caravans. Supported by the apathy or complicity of the authorities, criminals saw in strangers an opportunity or a danger. An opportunity to swell their ranks, a danger if they reinforced their opponents. So, many were killed and then thrown into pits. For months, no one did anything.
He Camargo case It’s something different. The motive for the attack has never been clear. On January 22, 2021, a group of at least 17 migrants, most from the southern mountains of Guatemala, and their guides traveled the dirt roads of the rural area of Camargo, a border town. The intention was to cross to the other side. But in one of the breaches, six state police vehicles, two trucks and four tanks from the corporation’s Special Operations Group (GOPES) intercepted them.
According to the repentant police officer’s story, a shootout began that left part of the migrant group dead. Most were young. There were men and women, all from very humble communities, all hoping to find an opportunity in the United States. The Prosecutor’s Office demonstrated at the trial that neither the migrants nor their guides, two Mexican citizens, shot at the police officers. After the initial attack, which began without the motive yet being known, the police commanders, agent Horacio Rocha Nambo, commander of the GOPES, and Mayra Elizabeth Santillana, coordinator in the state police area, ordered the survivors to be finished off. Then, they doused them with gasoline and set them on fire.
It has been two years and a few months of investigation and almost a semester of trial. In all this time, the only police officer who has spoken has been Vásquez León. The others have maintained the omertá and, now, will spend much of the rest of their lives in prison. In a statement released tonight, the Prosecutor’s Office said: “With this type of actions, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Tamaulipas reaffirms its commitment to work in coordination with national and international bodies, to not leave crimes that threaten unpunished against life and human rights, especially of vulnerable groups such as people in migration situations.”
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