Ayotzinapa Massacre - Part 1

The events that occurred on September 26 and 27, 2014 in the city of Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, went around the world for the crimes "Against Humanity" involving federal law enforcement forces against students of Ayotzinapa and that culminated with the forced disappearance of 43 students and six dead.

Also I make the translation and a few comments to explain its content and to enrich it.

Ayotzinapa, in Nahuatl, is a place for turtles. The symbol of the front page of this report is first of all recognition to the victims of this case.

The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) was convened by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in agreement with the State of Mexico and the representatives of the victims of the case, to accompany the investigation of the crimes and their perpetrators, the missing, and care for victims and relatives.

The GIEI has worked intensively in these six months in which its initial mandate was defined. At the end of this period, and while defining the possibilities or conditions for follow-up of the case, the Group wants to make its report public. It is a matter of reporting on the work done and presenting the findings, advances and proposals to the Mexican authorities, family members and victims, as well as the human rights community, media and people who have followed this case closely.

This report is a contribution in the fight against impunity. The GIEI has read and analyzed in depth the investigations carried out by the PGJ and PGR, and has used as a fundamental part of its study documents, declarations and evidence already contained in the file itself. He has also carried out his own research on the aspects considered key in the same, and counted on expert reports of independent experts of recognized international trajectory in several of the indicated areas.

The events that occurred the night of September 26 to 27, 2014 in Iguala shook the conscience of Mexico and the world. Since then, numerous declarations, ministerial investigations, articles and publications have been given on the development of these facts. The GIEI appointed by the IACHR.

The Normal Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa

In 1926 was founded what today is the Normal “Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa”, settled in the municipality Guerrero of Tixtla. It is part of an education project for rural communities that at the beginning of the twentieth century received much encouragement from the State, but has been losing it in recent years. Of the 36 rural women who existed in Mexico, there are currently 17.

On December 12, 2011, during a blockade on the “Autopista del Sol” near Chilpancingo, students Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, from Ayotzinapa Normal, were killed in an operation carried out by federal police officers, Ministerial and state. To end the protest, the youths were attacked with guns on both sides of the road. Another 41 youths were arrested and at least three others were injured. The demands of the students had to do with academic issues.

On November 11 and 12, 2013, in two different incidents, the normalists were also attacked by Guerrero policemen. According to press reports, on November 11, the normalists were beaten by state police, under the orders of the then Secretary of Public Security of Guerrero, Javier Lara Montellanos, and to avoid that they took buses, the policemen stayed near the station of Equal to the normalists responded to the assaults with stones.

The next day, November 12, 2013, about 200 riot police dispersed young normalists on the outskirts of Chilpancingo to avoid carrying passenger lorries. To do this, they also used tear gas, which affected students in a kindergarten located 50 meters from the events. Several normalists were also affected by gases and blows. The riot police remained for several hours in areas near the central bus station.

That same day, November 13, local Guerrero media reported that the State Attorney General's Office, directed by Iñaki Blanco, began several preliminary investigations against about 50 students of Ayotzinapa for the crimes of attacks on the general routes of Communication, theft, damages and others, so that "they will proceed with all energy and rigor" against the "vandal acts provoked by the students".

On January 7, 2014, two other students from the Normal Isidro Burgos, Freddy Vazquez and Eugenio Tamarit, were killed when they were hit by a truck while they were riding on the Acapulco-Zihuatanejo federal highway. Other students were injured during the event.

The only occasion in which Ayotzinapa's normalists had a direct relationship with the government of José Luis Abarca was on June 3, 2013, when they participated in a mobilization in front of the municipal palace, for the disappearance, four days before, of the leaders of the Unidad Popular, Arturo Hernández Cardona, Nicolás Mendoza, Rafael Bandera Román, Héctor Arroyo Delgado, Gregorio Dante Cervantes, Jimmy Castrejón, Efraín Amates Luna, Ángel Román Ramírez. Five of them managed to escape, while Hernandez Cardona, Bandera and Roman were assassinated. Like other organizations that participated in this protest, the young people demanded the presentation with life of the members of the UP.

The state of Guerrero is one of the poorest in Mexico and here federal and military police forces are deployed to fight criminal groups that operate in the cultivation, production and trafficking of drugs; Also since the 1970s they have also fought guerrilla groups like that of Lucio Cabañas. However, human rights violations of the civilian population should not be allowed, as has happened in the case of “Aguas Blancas” in 1995, where 17 farmers were massacred, and in the “Charco” in 1998 where 11 indigenous people were massacred.

Source: Report published in September 2015 by the interdisciplinary group of independent experts GIEI of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights IACHR.