Mexico: The truth behind the murder of 43 students
Nine years after 43 students vanished in southern Mexico, the shocking extent of officials’ complicity has finally been revealed, said Andres Martinez in Infobae (Argentina). A New York Times investigation has found that “not only narcos but also police and even the military” in Guerrero state colluded in the murder of these young men. On Sept. 26, 2014, police in the town of Iguala intercepted several buses carrying about 100 students from Ayotzinapa teachers’ college and forced 43 of them into patrol cars. The students were never seen again. Eventually, international investigators established that police had handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos cartel, which killed them and burned their bodies. But the investigators complained that the military and local government were refusing to cooperate, and now we know why. Soldiers on the cartel’s payroll gave the hitmen weapons. Corrupt mayors quashed local investigations. And a coroner got rid of the students’ bodies in his family’s crematorium. In short, “public officials were working for the gang.”
The Times story laid out this corrupt tale in compelling detail, said Gustavo de Hoyos Walther in Sin Embargo (Mexico). It is based on 23,000 text messages—obtained by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency via wiretap—which confirm that Guerreros Unidos “ordered local police” to intercept the buses because they mistook the students for a rival gang. The messages also reveal that the Mexican military used the Israeli spy technology Pegasus to track down the suspected kidnappers early on, but never shared that information with police who were searching for the students. “Had they done so, many lives would probably have been saved.” Why did it take two American entities—the DEA and The New York Times—to unravel this Mexican mystery?
Because “in Mexico we always pay more attention to research published abroad,” said Sergio Sarmiento in El Diario de Juárez (Mexico). In fact, Mexicans already knew the government was deeply involved in the Iguala case. The “most novel thing about the report” is the news that Omar Gómez Trejo, special prosecutor in the Ayotzinapa case, has “fled to the United States” because “he is afraid for his safety.” That’s alarming, given that he was appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The president came into office in 2018 promising to get justice for the Iguala victims, but instead he has downplayed the extent of the corruption.
This exposé is part of an American campaign to “put pressure” on López Obrador to get the cartels under control, said Leopoldo Mendívil in La Crónica (Mexico). Republican candidates for U.S. president keep threatening to invade Mexico for “national security” reasons. I don’t believe that will actually happen. But I do believe the Biden administration is sending our government the message that it must “overhaul its strategy against the narcos.” Why else would the DEA suddenly deliver “such an enormous volume of compromising information” to the Times? “The United States has a way of making itself heard.”