Reforma: Denise Dresser*
Translated by Amanda Moody
Lying, obscuring, discrediting, confusing, clouding - various government factions have dedicated themselves to these ever since the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (IGIE) revealed the "historical truth" about Ayotzinapa to be pure fiction.
They have used various means to disseminate false information. They have produced expert reports in order to create new versions of the alleged fire in the Cocula garbage dump. They have brought “witnesses” from Colombia and Guatemala seeking to discredit the Group’s two prosecutors, Claudia Paz y Ángela Buitrago. They have used all the tools available in the Mexican state's arsenal to isolate, weaken and discredit the Group because of what it is trying to do. Uncover the truth.
Lying, obscuring, discrediting, confusing, clouding - various government factions have dedicated themselves to these ever since the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (IGIE) revealed the "historical truth" about Ayotzinapa to be pure fiction.
They have used various means to disseminate false information. They have produced expert reports in order to create new versions of the alleged fire in the Cocula garbage dump. They have brought “witnesses” from Colombia and Guatemala seeking to discredit the Group’s two prosecutors, Claudia Paz y Ángela Buitrago. They have used all the tools available in the Mexican state's arsenal to isolate, weaken and discredit the Group because of what it is trying to do. Uncover the truth.
The uncomfortable truth about what happened that fateful night in Ayotzinapa. The truth that, by act or omission, involved the local police, the state police, the federal police and the Army. Young men killed at close range. Young men chased throughout Iguala city and then through the mountains. A young man skinned. An inexplicable degree of violence exercised against student teachers who did not deserve to die for hijacking buses. The inexplicable silence of the C4 [Center for Coordination of Communication and Command of municipal, state and federal police with the Army in Iguala] for several hours and the information that they have refused to make public.
And all this in the context of everything that is not yet known. The fate of the fifth bus, which is still missing and may have been carrying drugs without the students’ knowledge. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team’s confirmation of the absence of the alleged fire in the Cocula garbage dump.
The IGIE still has a great deal of work to do. And instead of giving support, the State is actively hindering. Denying access to new evidence related to the investigation. Denying access to new expert opinion and to recently arrested suspects. Fragmenting inquiries by holding them in courts throughout the country, hindering investigation and access to the information which the families should have. Not delivering photos, documents and videos taken by members of Battalion 27 on the night of the incident.
Either by collusion, concealment or incompetence - or following orders - multiple levels of government are not doing what they should. The coordinated strategy seems to be that of buying time until the IGIE mandate ends in April. So that the uncomfortable foreigners leave and take the truth with them.
Leaving behind a country in which the law enforcement system is a disgrace. Where investigation is based on confessions, many of them extracted under torture. Where the experts are under the command of the Attorney General’s Office and therefore have incentives to create guilty parties rather than carry out credible investigations. Where instead of integrating everything into one single investigation to facilitate trials, they are dispersed, fragmented and involve more than 5 different courts. Where the Attorney General’s Office invents witnesses and plants evidence and former prosecutors who lie - such as Murillo Karam [former Attorney General who claimed to have found the "historical truth" that all 43 students were burned in the Cocula garbage dump] - enjoy absolute impunity.
Those who have come from outside to assess Ayotzinapa reveal a State that is unable or unwilling to investigate, that allowed months to pass before it started tackling the facts, that even after the first IGIE report has not followed the suggested lines of investigation and that continues to imprison suspects who declare falsehoods about the Cocula garbage dump.
Faced with such evidence, only one conclusion is possible: the State is telling stories because it doesn’t want anybody to dig up the truth one day. The State is dismissing other statements, ignoring scientific evidence and tarnishing whoever presents it because it cannot deal with what Ayotzinapa shows: a criminal justice system which is rotten from head to toe. Corrupt. Dysfunctional. Inept.
The IGIE members say they are like a vaccine, coming to generate antibodies so that Ayotzinapa is never repeated. So that the oral trials of the new criminal justice system [replacing the inquisitorial system in which judges rule on cases based solely on documents submitted to them] avoid the opacity which allows the Attorney General’s Office to fabricate guilty parties and tell stories and boast of many prisoners and many imprisoned. For there to be an enforced disappearance law that operates in accordance with the highest international standards.
But they know that they are asking for something that seems impossible: a process by which those who did everything wrong may do it well. They are asking for the Mexican government to reform itself, when it suits it not to. The problem now is that there are Ayotzinapas all the time, and if Mexico does not accept the vaccine, we will continue dying.
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*Denise Dresser is a Mexican political analyst, writer, and university professor. After completing undergraduate work at The College of Mexico, she earned her Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University. She is currently a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), where she teaches courses such as Comparative Politics, Political Economy and Contemporary Mexican Politics. She has taught at Georgetown University and the University of California. In December 2015, she was decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government. Twitter: @DeniseDresserG