We Will Only Believe Mexico Government When It Takes Clear Actions - Families of Disappeared

(Photo: Carlos Ramos Mamahua)

La Jornada: Blanche Petrich and Leopoldo Ramos

Saltillo, Coahuila - The families of the disappeared, whose number is not even accurate, but exceeds 20,000, according to official estimates, declared:

"We have lost trust in the authority, and it has to make a clear and concrete effort to restore it."

After this warning, which appears in the Final Declaration of the International Forum on Forced Disappearances that concluded here today, it is expected that the government of Enrique Peña Nieto

"might dare to look at itself in the mirror, even thought it does not like the reflection of reality", explained the organizer of United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila (FUNDEC), Juan López Villanueva.

The forum developed a series of proposals for the federal government and the legislatures, among which stands out the demand that the government recognize the state of humanitarian emergency and the urgent nature of locating the victims.

It also proposes that the recently created Special Search Unit for Disappeared Persons have clear competencies, resources and sufficient staff, that the Attorney General's Office (PGR) and state prosecutors sign rapid-access agreements with the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, forensic medical services and other entities, in addition to giving families access to records and proceedings.

They urge that just as the problem of disappeared migrants must be addressed and made visible, it must do the same with the police in that situation "because of their functions".

A Right to the Truth

In their own workshops, one hundred families who have lost track of one or several family members prepared a working paper that was the starting point for many of the subsequent discussions. Their paper begins:

"As relatives of victims of forced disappearance we begin from distrust of the authorities."

And they demand of the government:

"In order to trust, what we need is to see a guaranteed right to the truth, to find our family members and that justice is done in all cases."

After defining the current humanitarian crisis as "multi-factorial", the forum's declaration maintains:

"The perpetrators act without distinction of competencies or jurisdictions, they rapidly move victims great distances. They have immediate action teams in order to disappear people. Faced with this, the State does not move and its performance is reduced to a minimum and is deficient."

At another point, they reaffirmed their willingness to cooperate with the authorities, and they recalled that they, over the years, did their own investigations,

"work that should be considered essential in order to continue the processes of search and investigation".

Among the officials who participated in the work sessions was the Deputy Attorney General for Human Rights, Ricardo García Cervantes, and his public policy coordinator, Eliana García; the Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs of the Secretariat of Government Relations, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez; the Secretary of Government of Coahuila, Armando Luna, and Juan Jesús Yañez Arreola, state deputy prosecutor for the search of unlocated persons (a newly created position), all with numerous collaborators who carried large packages of documents and records.

The result was satisfactory, says María Dolores González Saravia from Advisory Services for Peace (SERAPAZ), as it already achieved that some of the proposals will stand as commitments for comprehensive public policies.

The Dark Area

For three days, high-level federal officials, experts on the issue of national and international bodies and families worked together in plenary sessions and workshops trying to "better understand" the phenomenon of disappearances that has exploded across the country, mainly in the north, especially since the beginning of Felipe Calderón's presidency.

The format adopted, said López Villanueva, allowed a free exchange in order to analyze without filters the situation that is being experienced.

"It was like putting together all the elements on a blackboard to see the map of impunity, as the crime of forced disappearance is specifically designed to perpetuate impunity."

The experience was unprecedented, since the forum was funded by the State, "which was committed to it". It was convened by academics and brought together outstanding experts in the field: United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In four work sessions--effective search, scientific investigation, legal harmonization and comprehensive care for victims--officials sought to "look at the bottom, to the root, not just the leaves and trunk, to understand how the machinery of disappearance operates", added López, but it also focused on identifying the perpetrator and authorities responsible for collusion or by being remiss or reluctant in the search.

This issue of collusion "is like a large forbidden area, which is right at the root" of this open crime, said the organizer of FUNDEC, a group that was founded seven years ago with twenty cases of disappearances.

He described a process that appears as a pattern:

"First, family members go through the painful phase in which he come up against an authority who doesn't protect them. Then they come to realize that the State is the aggressor, or even more, that it has been taken over by organized crime or, even worse, coordinates the criminal activities. This is a very tough facet, but it has to be named, it has to come to light."

Also present were: Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity [MPJDP], CADHAC of Monterrey, Center for Human Rights of Women in Chihuahua, AFADEM, Justice Foundation of Central America, Victoria 10 of Guanajuato, Until We Find Them of Michoacán, Mothers Network looking for their children in the state of Mexico, HIJOS [Children] and Eureka, as well as the Committee Juan de Larios of Coahuila. Spanish original