La Jornada: Rafael Landerreche* Translated by: Laura Turner
The experts from the IACHR both invite us and provide details to allow us to realize the magnitude of the operation, its duration, and last but not least, its complexity: 43 disappeared, six dead, and a student brutally tortured and executed is already in itself quite atrocious.
But the IGIE reminds us that it does not stop here. There are also the 40 wounded and dozens of students and citizens in general who survived the attack—despite being ambushed, chased, beaten and subjected to indiscriminate fire throughout three hours of violence—in addition to the terror induced in the population as whole. In other words, if instead of the 43 disappeared and the 6 executed, we do not have at least a hundred dead, it wasn’t for a lack of trying on the part of those involved.
Once weighed and assessed, we are able to understand the premises of the IGIE that are the cornerstone of the report as a whole:
1. The motive of the crime: Although the seizing of buses by normal school students in Ayotzinapa was already a part of the uses and customs of the region, a coordinated operation of this magnitude had never been seen. A response as unusual as what happened at Ayotzinapa requires an explanation: "All this means that the action of the perpetrators was motivated by what was considered an action carried out by the students against interests at the highest level."**
2. Regarding a modus operandi: The "coordinated and massive" character of the actions necessarily imply "a structure of command, with operational coordination". This is the other key necessary in order to understand the report as a whole, as well as the importance of the fifth bus that could have transported drugs.
1. The motive of the crime: Although the seizing of buses by normal school students in Ayotzinapa was already a part of the uses and customs of the region, a coordinated operation of this magnitude had never been seen. A response as unusual as what happened at Ayotzinapa requires an explanation: "All this means that the action of the perpetrators was motivated by what was considered an action carried out by the students against interests at the highest level."**
2. Regarding a modus operandi: The "coordinated and massive" character of the actions necessarily imply "a structure of command, with operational coordination". This is the other key necessary in order to understand the report as a whole, as well as the importance of the fifth bus that could have transported drugs.
Let us remember the facts from September 26th of last year. Municipal police forces, not only from Iguala, but also from two other municipalities, in addition to the ministerial police, the Federal Police, and the Army, were either directly involved, or at the very least "present". According to the official report—Warriors United in coordination with the municipal police of Iguala (who in turn, coordinated with all the others). Who coordinated all these groups? José Luis Abarca [the mayor of Iguala] and his wife? Sci-Fi aside, let’s stick to the facts.
The GIEI mentions "a structure for coordination and communication", the C-4, "in which are present representatives of the State police, the Federal Police, the municipal police and the Army". However, the experts are too sparing as to the nature of this body. They barely mention that the acronym comes from Control, Command, Communications, and Computation center and, from what they do say, the C-4 seems fairly harmless (and ineffective), judging from the fact that it receives and channels assistance and complaint calls from the emergency numbers 066 and 089. The GIEI did not claim that the C-4 may have been the structure of the command and coordination required by the reality of the operation described by them. But we can take this a bit further. A certain type of detour is helpful here.
During the administration of Carlos Salinas [1988-94] BOMs (Bases of Mixed Operations) were created, which had the precise task of coordinating the actions of all public security forces at the different levels of government and various branches and specialties, from the municipal police to the army. The importance of this fact should not be overlooked. For one thing, the doors to the institutionalization of a historical turned opened: the Army, whose eternal destiny was to defend the country in case of an invasion, shifted from pointing the roaring sound of its guns from an external enemy to one inside—in the end, the same people who gave each son to be a soldier. It was an historic turning point that we still have not grasped. Moreover, the BOM was not a phenomenon unique to Mexico; rather, it was the common mark of the Latin American neoliberal governments. Despite their rhetoric, these governments knew that only by force could they maintain their economic model.
The GIEI mentions "a structure for coordination and communication", the C-4, "in which are present representatives of the State police, the Federal Police, the municipal police and the Army". However, the experts are too sparing as to the nature of this body. They barely mention that the acronym comes from Control, Command, Communications, and Computation center and, from what they do say, the C-4 seems fairly harmless (and ineffective), judging from the fact that it receives and channels assistance and complaint calls from the emergency numbers 066 and 089. The GIEI did not claim that the C-4 may have been the structure of the command and coordination required by the reality of the operation described by them. But we can take this a bit further. A certain type of detour is helpful here.
During the administration of Carlos Salinas [1988-94] BOMs (Bases of Mixed Operations) were created, which had the precise task of coordinating the actions of all public security forces at the different levels of government and various branches and specialties, from the municipal police to the army. The importance of this fact should not be overlooked. For one thing, the doors to the institutionalization of a historical turned opened: the Army, whose eternal destiny was to defend the country in case of an invasion, shifted from pointing the roaring sound of its guns from an external enemy to one inside—in the end, the same people who gave each son to be a soldier. It was an historic turning point that we still have not grasped. Moreover, the BOM was not a phenomenon unique to Mexico; rather, it was the common mark of the Latin American neoliberal governments. Despite their rhetoric, these governments knew that only by force could they maintain their economic model.
With the Zapatista insurgency in Chiapas [1994] and the counterinsurgency with which the government answered, we could see the BOMs in action. But there was an additional element that was not included in the public version, although it was in the manuals of the Secretariat of Defense: what they called irregular forces, better known as paramilitary groups, in Chiapas. Typical of these operations is that the direct action of killing subversives is left to the lower rungs of the hierarchy, while the highest rungs are limited to planning, preparing and supervising the actions (or "being present", as with Ayotzinapa). This is derived from the great war strategists.
That's what happened in the Acteal massacre, with the paramilitary killing people, the state police accompanying them closely and the army supervising at a distance after having planned and prepared everything. In the attacks on Zapatista autonomous municipalities that occurred after the Acteal massacre, including the slaughter at Chavajeval in June of the following year, the mechanics changed a bit. As the paramilitaries were problematic after Acteal, direct attacks were entrusted to policemen, while the army was still in its role of accompanying at a distance.
MV Note: The Acteal Massacre was the slaughter, on December 22, 1997, in the village of that name in Chiapas, of 45 members of the pacifist group Las Abejas ("The Bees"), which supports the goals of the Zapatistas. They were attending a prayer meeting. It was carried out by the paramilitary group Mascara Roja, or Red Mask (For more information, see Wikipedia). Chavajeval is a Tzotzil Mayan village participating in the Zapatista movement in which eight persons were shot in June of 1998 when members of the Army, state police and paramilitaries attacked a fiesta.We are now able to understand the importance of the fifth bus: at the risk of losing a shipment of heroin, the entire apparatus of the security forces from the Army to the local police and their new irregular forces (who are not paramilitaries, but the hired killers of organized crime) undertook the massive action of indiscriminate attacks, direct attacks against life, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, in order to preserve their loot.
It might be said that the bus is no more than a hypothesis. Well, if we reject it, what is the alternative? The coordinated operation is not a hypothesis Was everything done as an act of counterinsurgency or sadism? A narcostate or sadoterrorism. It doesn't make much difference.
**All quotes are from the report of the IGIE. Spanish original
*Rafael Landerreche Gómez Morín is professor of Mexican history and Head Librarian of the Manuel Gómez Morín Library at the Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico. His father, Manuel Gómez Morín, was a founder of the National Action Party (PAN) and a champion of 'civic life'.