2009 Fire at ABC ChildCare Center: Emblem of Impunity in Mexico

Proceso: José Gil Olmos

The murky case of the fire at the ABC ChildCare Center in Hermosillo, Sonora, is emblematic of the impunity in Mexico. Four years have passed after the "accident", and a stammering federal government barely promises again the same as the Calderón administration: justice. The new thesis of a group of concerned parents is relentless: the incident was "provoked", and this happened because of corruption.

Four years after the fire at the ABC ChildCare Center, the demand for justice has not been served by any authority for the parents of the 49 dead children dead and more than 70 affected.

"This is the tyranny of impunity and with this government, I have little hope," says Abraham Fraijo, a disillusioned member of the June 5 Movement.

During this time, the parents of the children killed and affected by the fire at the ChildCare Center in Hermosillo, Sonora, have sought by means of marches, rallies, popular trials, lawsuits, letters, interviews and even petitions to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to investigate and punish those responsible for the event.

Until now, however, nothing has been achieved. Of the 29 people investigated for their alleged responsibility, only Delia Irene Botello Amante, former regional coordinator of the Mexican Institute of Childcare of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), remains imprisoned in the Social Rehabilitation Center (CERESO) of Hermosillo, because she has no right to bail.

Now, based on a suspicion that circulated among the parents of children in the childcare center from the beginning, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) is following a new line of investigation that points to the responsibility of former Governor Eduardo Bours Castello.

According to the document submitted to the PGR by the group Hands United for Our Children, the cellar adjoining the ABC ChildCare Center was serving as a storehouse for the state Secretariat of Treasury. The fire in that cellar "was intentional", and it was ordered by officials of the Bours government.

Based on research conducted by this group made up of parents of the fallen and injured children, the fire that occurred on June 5, 2009, "was neither accidental nor fortuitous", but was "ordered and directed" by Juan Carlos Lam Félix, who served as technical secretary of the local executive power in the Bours' government.

According to the document, a copy of which Proceso has obtained and which was delivered to the Attorney General of the Republic Jesús Murillo Karam on April 17, the incident was intended to

"destroy documentary information related to the debt of 10 billion pesos ... [786 million USD] during the six year [Bours administration] for the Sonora Projects Plan, which was the main government program of that administration."

According to the investigation conducted by the Hands United for Our Children group, Félix Lam ordered the act, and it was executed by his driver and bodyguard Carlos Andrés López Meza, who months later, on August 18, 2009, was found outside Hermosillo executed by nine bullets.

According to a witness who was in the industrial nave where the fire occurred--shaped in part by the nursery and in part by the warehouse of the state government, separated only by a makeshift wall that did not reach to the ceiling--López Meza was in the place aboard his black pickup truck and, in a dialogue with two other people, he was heard to say that "he regretted what was going to happen." One of those people was Efrain Castillo Guerrero, an official of the Bours government, indicated the document itself, which is in the hands of the PGR.

The information delivered to Attorney General Karam indicates that a person is identified who possesses written testimony of an official in which she describes how they came to the burning and destruction of the papers that they handed over to them. The [papers] ought to disappear using jet fuel that had been previously removed from the state government's hangar at the Hermosillo airport.

The text indicates that prosecutor Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez was informed of this, but at no time did he summon witnesses to declare [make legal statements before the investigative police] in order to present their testimonies and [hence] expand the preliminary investigation that was opened in connection with the incident that occurred in the cellar of the ABC ChildCare Center.

Starting with the complaint filed on April 17 by the lawyer for the association Hands United for Our Children, Gabriel Alvarado Serrano, the PGR opened a preliminary investigation .... Renato Sales, deputy prosecutor of Regional Control, Criminal Proceedings and Amparo, said that by instructions of the Attorney General of the Republic, Jesús Murillo Karam, all PGR actions taken in 2009 in connection with the ABC ChildCare fire will be reviewed.

"They're going to investigate everything that has to do with that trust (Sonora Plan Projects). In fact, reports have already been requested from the Secretariat of Finance of the State Government. We are waiting for some documentation. We will review, we are going to look for signs related to the presence of that trust ... documentation, if anything remains, and how they managed this money," said the deputy prosecutor of the PGR in statements made public in different media.

In an interview with Proceso, attorney Gabriel Alvarado says this new evidence submitted to the PGR is seeking to arrive at the historical truth of the case and to impose responsibilities.

"Finally, it must be remembered that the bottom line of these events is that 40 children died. It is not about pointing out those responsible, but clarifying the situation, and it makes the PGR aware of a series of circumstances involving names and details of what possibly could have happened there," clarifies the lawyer.

She recalls that the Sonora Projects Plan was Bours' most ambitious project, but it failed. This ambitious plan, she says, was to carry out 100 road works, transportation, paving, hydraulics, recreational parks, tourist infrastructure, internal circuits in some major cities, etc., which required an initial investment of 4 billion pesos [314.5 million USD].

In 2007 Governor Bours asked for a loan from Banorte secured by bonds based on property and automobile taxes that would be charged over three decades. But since it was not approved by the state Congress, the debt immediately climbed, with interest, to over 520 million pesos [40.9 million USD] in the first seven months.

Governor Bours said that with this project an economic impact of about 152 billion pesos [almost 12 billion USD] was envisioned to benefit the state. But the financing scheme of bank debt was not approved until a year later, in 2008, and eventually the interest continued to grow and the state was in debt for 19 billion pesos payable [1.5 million USD] in 30 years.

The evidence of irregularities committed by the State Treasury presumably is what was intentionally burned in the cellar adjoining ABC ChildCare.

Governor Bours's Plot

According to new lines of investigation delivered to the PGR, Governor Eduardo Bours, his attorney Abel Murrieta, Juan Carlos Lam, as well as the government's Technical Secretary and then director of Social Communication, Daniel Durán, deployed a strategy to divert attention from the fire and focus it on the owners of the childcare center in order to evade all responsibility.

Proof of this, states the document delivered to the PGR, is that during one of the visits that Daniel Karam, director of IMSS who replaced Juan Molinar Horcasitas, made to Sonora in order to address the conflict over the childcare center, Governor Bours said,

"Look, Director, what good problem does the president of the Republic have since one of those responsible for this fire is the niece of Margaret (wife of then President Felipe Calderón), ... how to explain this and see that I just took a picture of her in the company of relatives of Marcia Gómez del Campo ... ".

Bours sent two of his officials involved with the owners of the childcare center, Antonio Salido (legal representative) and Alfonso Escalante (husband of one of the owners, Sandra Lucia Tellez Nieves) to give a press conference. When they refused, he sent his chief of Communications to pressure them, and on June 9 they had to give the conference accompanied by associates of the stricken childcare center.

"In reality, the strategy of Bours and his team was consummated. The associates of the childcare center were the big culprits before the entire society," says the document, which also accused the former governor of falsifying an IMSS document "in order to incriminate more associates in a definitive way."

It deals with function 23180 of the chief of Economic Benefits of IMSS, Emigdio Martínez García, dated July 26, 2005,

"whose content is contrary to all other documentation issued by the IMSS related to ABC Childcare, which praised the childcare center's smooth operation."

That is, Bours tried to set a new trap and "to legally incriminate" associates of the childcare center, because that office turned out to be "apocryphal", so he declared before the prosecutor Martínez García, these recommendations for improvement that supposedly were made to the childcare center never existed, and so they could not have been fulfilled by the childcare center's owners.

Given this alleged web of traps and strategies to define responsibility, the only ones who have lost are the parents of the dead and affected children. Four years after the fire they continue to demand justice, especially after June 2010 when the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation found that both Bours and former IMSS directors Juan Molinar Horcasitas and Daniel Karam were not involved in "serious violation" of guarantees in the case.

[The Supreme Court] also acquitted one of the owners of the childcare center, Marcia Matilde Gómez del Campo Laborín, cousin of Margarita Zavala, Felipe Calderón's wife.

Impunity

According to deputy prosecutor Rento Sales Heredia, on 5 July the PGR will have the results of the new line of investigation regarding the origin and suspected intent of the incident and that points to former governor Eduardo Bours.

"One has to inquire precisely in connection with this statement to see if we have enough evidence to prove that the fire was intentional and to review all the evidence that exists in the investigation. There is an expert opinion, for example, in terms of fire and explosives which states that this was caused, that it was directly caused by a lighter or a match starting from the presence of jet fuel," explained the deputy prosecutor in remarks published last week.

Abram Fraijo, father of Emiliana, who died in the fire, and a member of the June 5 Movement, expresses his reservations about the new investigative line.

"I hope that the announcement of the PGR's investigation of premeditated arson isn't a smoke screen. One hopes that we will not have to wait another four years for them to tell us that, more or less, the investigation isn't going. How are we going to review the revised, if everything is already as clear as the ABC childcare has been from the beginning? The responsibility of officials has been pointed out, there is evidence, statements. How hard is to dispense justice? ... But the arm of corruption is very long. That's the problem."

Proceso: What does it mean that there is a new line of investigation?

"This doesn't absolve the others of responsibility. It doesn't matter how and when the fire started: safety measures in the childcare center were a lie. The subrogation scheme and the way the IMSS was delivering childcare permits at that time under Juan Molinar, was a corruption.

"That line of research does not absolve responsibility. We must remember the determination of the Supreme Court that said certainly there had been violations of justice, but there are no responsible persons. It's a pain! How are you going to have violations but no one is responsible? That's not right, it's not justice, that's fucking theater. If the Supreme Court of Justice did this, what can we expect of judges in Hermosillo or of the PGR?" 

Fraijo is one of the parents of the children of ABC Childcare who has been most active in demanding justice. Together with other parents, he organized the June 5th Movement, which has participated in all forums, rallies, protests and documentaries about the tragedy. On Wednesday, June 5, he led the march that took place in Mexico City, and then he declared that impunity is the biggest problem for justice.

"That's the problem: the names, surnames, contacts. That's the problem in Mexico: If you have the contacts, if you have the correct family names, you can kill and they are not going to do anything because you have a whole network of corruption above you protecting you. Although there might be evidence against those responsible, if you have enough money you are going to go unpunished. We see that in the case of ABC Childcare. In no country has it happened like this. If it happens, I can be sure that heads will roll. It is so."

Proceso: With this new government, what possibilities are seen that there might be justice?

- "I have little hope for an imposed government, but I'd like for them to prove me wrong."

Spanish original

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