Sinembargo: Alejandro Páez Varela*
Translated by Ruby Izar-Shea
It’s not a little torture. It’s not that they are a little disappeared. It’s not an event in a small town, Ajuchitlan del Progreso, Guerrero, where military torturers victimized a woman who is now in jail. It’s not Iguala [Ayotzinapa students], it’s not Tlatlaya, it’s not Apatzingan, it’s not Ostula.
It’s not a little torture done by a handful of Armed Forces officers operating on their own and who, at times, go overboard. It’s not the Iguala police officers, some military officers that where around there, some Federal Police officers that asked something.
Let’s stop with the euphemisms: it’s much more.
It can be found in the reports of at least three United Nations (UN) reporters [UN Rapporteur on Torture, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights]. It can be found in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reports and, moreover, not going too far, the US Department of State said it last week in a report that makes the Mexican armed forces and police look like another criminal organization disputing territories, torturing and killing.
I don’t applaud the Secretary of National Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, for accepting the legitimacy of that video; how could he not; this happened more than a year ago! No, I don’t applaud him either for apologizing.
I will give the Secretary a standing ovation, I swear, if he digs further where he went digging a few days ago and tells us how many more videos there are; how many more Mexicans have died or are in jail, like that woman who was tortured, in illegal military actions.
I will applaud the General if, in an act of transparency and accountability, he announces that his files are open to public review. May I say, always with great respect for his rank, that if he had allowed the IGIE [Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts investigating the Ayotzinapa case] to interview military personnel present the night of Iguala, maybe we would have known some time ago that federal police officers and another local police department (municipality of Huitzuco) participated in the disappearance of the 43,which we now know thanks to the National Commission on Human Rights.
It’s not a video to apologize for. In fact, apologies do little for the majority, aside from what it might mean to the woman who is still in jail.
It’s not a little torture, people a little disappeared or a little murdered. It’s more serious and more widespread than acknowledged. They are Mexican State forces that conspired, kidnapped a group of citizens, all students, and disappeared them. It’s said they handed them over to organized crime, that they took them to the Cocula trash dump and many other things; yes, yes, those are details of an investigation (which, by the way, no one believes). Yes, there is an urgent need for an investigation and getting to the truth. But it is even more urgent for the Mexican government, supported by shill journalists, to stop the hurtful half-truths.
I’ll applaud the Mexican Government when it stops its false conversation with shameless journalists and disreputable “human rights defenders” (read here, among others, Isabel Miranda de Wallace) and it accepts the existing human rights crisis.
And I will give it a standing ovation, I swear, when it starts to do something, not just cover up and be an accomplice to criminals, at least by default, in these 9 years of agonizing darkness.
It’s not a video. It’s not isolated cases. They should recognize it. Spanish original
*Alejandro Páez Varela is a journalist and novelist. He is the author of the novels Heart of Kalashnikov (Alfaguara 2014, Planet 2008), Music for Dogs (Alfaguara 2013) and The Kingdom of the Flies (Alfaguara 2012) and collections of short stories and essays Batteries Not Included (Cal y Arena 2009 ) and Parachutes That Don't Open (2007). He wrote President In Waiting (Planeta 2011) and is a co-author of other journalistic books such as The War for Juarez (Planeta, 2008), The Aspirants 2006 (Planeta 2005) The Aspirants 2012 (Planeta 2011), The Lords of Mexico (2007), The Untouchables (2008). He was deputy editor of El Universal and of the magazine, Day Seven. and an editor at Reforma and El Economista. He is currently director of content of SinEmbargo.mx @paezvarela