Ayotzinapa Evidence Goes Missing

Frontera NorteSur: Editor’s Note: Frontera NorteSur still has a few more stories to go before ceasing publication. In today’s story, we report news that crucial evidence in the mass disappearance of the Ayotzinapa college students in Mexico last year was lost, hidden or destroyed.

Reminiscent of the Ciudad Juarez women’s murders and disappearances, evidence related to a bloody police attack on Mexican college students has been lost, destroyed or withheld from relatives.

The revelations were made by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) reviewing the killings of six people and the mass kidnappings of 43 students of the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college in Iguala, Guerrero, at the hands of local police and alleged drug cartel gunmen last September 26 and 27.

Commission: Mexico has 'serious problem' with disappearances

AP:  Mexico has a "serious problem" with disappearances and lacks a comprehensive national list of the missing to effectively deal with the problem, according to a report the country's National Human Rights Commission will present Monday to the U.N.

Commission chairman Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez will ask the United Nations Committee On Enforced Disappearances in Geneva to make several recommendations to Mexico's government on the issue, said the document, which The Associated Press was allowed to see. Read more.

More Femicide Victims Identified from Border Graveyard

Frontera NorteSur: The parents of Esmeralda Castillo Rincon recently heard sad news about their long-disappeared daughter. The 14-year-old had been missing from her Ciudad Juarez home since 2009, and the parents had waged a long campaign demanding her safe return.

On January 16, however, the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office (FGECH) notified Jose Luis Castillo and his wife, Martha Rincon, that Esmeralda's remains were among those of other female murder victims recovered from the Navajo Arroyo in the Juarez Valley bordering the United States in 2012 and 2013.

US State Department Urges Mexico "To Stay Calm"

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/11/234039.htm

Note: No one in the Obama cabinet, including Obama, has said anything about the Ayotzinapa case that I have seen. Only spokespersons. It's a topic they would like to go away--after all they have a lot riding on the Peña reforms and Peña has been a darling of the U.S. government. Now they have asked us to stay calm during the judicial process--as if there were a judicial process and as if 43 young men were not still forcibly disappeared. What did Shannon talk to Wayne about and what did Obama presumably talk to Peña Nieto about in China? That we will never know, but it surely went beyond patronizing platitudes to stay calm.


QUESTION: Jen, you were concerned about Mexico yesterday, and a couple of questions: Has the U.S. offered – or Mexico requested – any help in addressing the disappearance of the 43 students?

MS. PSAKI: Well, let me just – since you gave me the opportunity, let me just reiterate that we extend our deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the victims. The heinous and barbaric crime must be thoroughly and transparently investigated and those responsible be brought to justice without delay and punishment – without delay and punished, sorry – consistent with due process and respect for the rule of law. We urge all parties to remain calm through the process.
I’m not aware of any specific requests from the Mexican Government for U.S. assistance. I can certainly check with our team and see if anything has changed on that front since yesterday.

QUESTION: Please. Also, the – is there a concern by the U.S. Government – I know that Mr. Shannon met with Ambassador Wayne this morning. Is there any concern about the stability of the Mexican Government, given the violence, the lack of confidence on state and federal government, that maybe Mexico is sliding towards a failed state situation?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t believe that’s a concern we’ve expressed. Obviously, we’re concerned about tensions on the ground. That’s why we’re continuing to urge all parties to remain calm through the process, and obviously why we’re engaged, also, closely with officials there. We have recently put out a new travel advisory to U.S. citizens who are living there, and, obviously, we continue to provide them updated information.

Argentine Forensics Team Says First Remains Are Not of Ayotzinapa Students

Laura Carlsen, Americas Program

Finally, the Argentine forensics team called in as an independent analyst by human rights groups and parents of the missing students of Aytozinapa, has weighed in. The Team announced today that it analyzed 24 of the 30 remains discovered in Cerro Viejo in six graves outside Iguala, Guerrero and none are of the missing students.

"El EEAF has obtained genetic results from the laboratory The Bode Technology Group in the United States on 24 of the 30 remains recovered in Cierro Viejo. None of those showed probability of biological parentage with the 43 students of the rural college. Work continues on the six additional remains and results are expected soon."

This result concurs with the findings of the Federal Attorney General's office announced on Oct. 14 that the remains were not of the students.

The Argentine team states in its comuniqué that it has participated in the exhumation of 2 of the 30 bodies found at Cierro Viejo, 1 of the 9 found at La Parota and in recovery of remains at the dump in Cocula.

The process-of-elimination method of identification now leaves the Parota bodies and the Cocula bodies--and any others that might turn up as the search continues in a region that has come to be known as a narco-cemetery. AG Jesus Murillo Karam announced on Nov. 7 that detailed testimony from criminals led to the Cocula dump, where --again, according to the criminals--the students were killed, their bodies incinerated, bagged and tossed in a nearby river and other sites.

Murillo Karam stated that those remains have been sent to a lab in Innsbruck. It is not clear why they were sent to a different lab, if the Argentine team is testing remains from that site separately or how long this identification will take.

Although the announcement that 24 of the first remains found are not the students provides the first scientific certainty to the case, it still leaves far more questions than answers.

First, the AG office found the Cierro Viejo remains on the basis of testimony by members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel arrested after the crime who said they had driven the students there and murdered them. So the federal government investigators were either duped by the criminals or arranged the exhumations of the wrong bodies as a distraction or a feint, as many of the Ayotzinapa students and families claim. Parents had long been skeptical of the first claims, stating what we now know--that some of the remains were female and that the age ranges were wrong.

Suspicions are now deepened. If criminal testimony proved false the first time, how reliable can it be now that three new cartel members are claiming with graphic detail that they killed the students at the Cocula dump?

The parents have already stated firmly and angrily that they will not accept criminal testimony as a resolution of the case. They maintain that their sons are alive until there is irrefutable scientific proof that the remains are of their loved ones. So far, no matches have been made.

The communiqué of Nov.11 concludes:

"In synthesis, up to now there have been no identifications between the remains found in the 3 locations mentioned and the 43 students. The EEAF continues to work on efforts to identify the recovered remains, alongside official investigations. The institutional policy of the EAAF is to inform results first to the the families of the victims, and to the authorities in charge of the investigations."

 The last statement could be a concern. Does the team have to have the OK from the authorities to announce its findings, or just chronologically inform them first before going public?

The problem with the process of elimination method of identification in Guerrero is that the state seems to be capable of producing an untold number of cadavers to eliminate. The task of connecting these to other disappeared people will be complicated, to say the least. Record-keeping is poor and DNA testing extremely limited.

A persistent accusation dogging the AG in recent weeks is that the government and his office in particular is "managing the crisis" rather than resolving it. That is to say, that it has failed to reveal what it knows and is in the throes not of a real search but of a political dilemma regarding whether it's best to keep the students alive in the public eye or produce evidence of death. The latter prolongs the situation of uncertainty that is feeding demonstrations and actions across the country; the former s admission of a massacre and could ignite even greater public indignation and rage.

Notably, the message from the Argentine team does not indicate that the Cocula remains might be too deteriorated to be analyzed. The government has hinted at the possiblity--the latest version of the criminals' testimony indicates they went to great lengths to assure the bodies not be identified.

It will be vitally important to identify the rest of the remains quickly and reliably. The Aytozinapa families need that, and so do the thousands of families of other disappeared persons whose bodies anonymously in clandestine graves. Like the ones of Cierro Viejo.

Fueling drug gangs' impunity, unidentified corpses pile up in Mexico

Reuters: In Mexico's blood-soaked northern state of Sinaloa, a simple gravestone adorned with pink, blue and yellow plastic flowers marks the tomb of 42-year-old assistant carpenter Carlos Montano.

But Montano is alive and well in the city of Tijuana, hundreds of miles away near the U.S. border, the victim of different enemies: incompetence and indifference in a land where authorities have failed to identify thousands of people killed in grisly gangland violence.  Read more. 

New state law obliges business to pay salaries of missing people

Mexico News Daily: Mexican businesses have an obligation to support the families of employees who are among those who have disappeared, largely due to the drug war violence that began in 2006. That’s the gist of a new law in the state of Coahuila, but it has its detractors.

Many businesses are not happy with the prospect of having to continue paying salaries on behalf of employees who are no longer working, and at the same time pay someone else to do it. Read more. 

In Mexico, activist mother of missing man is slain

Los Angeles Times 
By Tracy Wilkinson
May 20, 2014

For 2 1/2 years, Sandra Luz Hernandez, like so many Mexican mothers, searched for her missing son.

Her activism grew steadily over time. She hung posters of her son and others who had disappeared. She led marches through her hometown of Culiacan, in the infamous drug cartel state of Sinaloa. She staged sit-ins outside the governor's office to demand justice. She scoured morgues and clandestine mass graves.

Last week, friends and colleagues say, her activism got her killed. Gunmen leaped from an SUV, put on masks and shot Hernandez dead in broad daylight on a Culiacan street. Read more. 

Senate approves civil proceedings to prosecute soldiers who took part in 'dirty war'

Original Americas Program Translation 

La Jornada - Mexico

February 6, 2014 

The Senate unanimously approved the withdrawal of the reservation made ​​by the Mexican government to the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, whereupon the civil courts now may try the military officials involved in the disappearances of persons during the dirty war.

The ruling approved by all parliamentary groups recognized that "the alleged perpetrators of the acts constituting the crime of forced disappearance of persons may be tried only by the competent jurisdictions of ordinary law in each state, excluding any special tribunals, in particular military.

"The acts constituting forced disappearance shall not be considered as committed in the performance of military duties."

"No privileges, immunities or special exemptions will be administered in such proceedings without consideration of the provisions included in the Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

The ruling emphasizes that this decision by the Mexican government to withdraw its 2002 reservation to the convention" is according to the verdict issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Coidh) on the case Radilla Pacheco (who was disappeared by military in the state of Guerrero during the so-called dirty war) against the United States of Mexico.

It emphasizes that "the ruling decided that the reservation made by Mexico does not meet the first requirement in Article XIX of the Convention, consequently it should be considered invalid. In this sense, it is clear that the application of military jurisdiction in the case, for which the state extended the jurisdiction of military courts to facts that are not strictly related to military discipline or legal interests of the military realm, is contrary the provision included in Article IX of the Treaty of reference, to which Mexico is clearly obligated. "

The ruling states that "considering the acts of enforced disappearance as an inhumane violation the rule of law, as well as the human dignity and human rights of individuals and not delimited to particular regions or political systems, it is an urgent task of the Sate to fight to eradicate it, not as a political, military or religious cause that justifies overlooking the situation.”

 Original Spanish article

Translated by Nidia Bautista

Mexico Kidnappings Top 105,000 In 2012, But Few Reported

Huffington Post
October 3, 2013

The most frequently cited statistic to illustrate the extent of Mexico’s problem with organized crime is the 70,000 people killed since ex-President Felipe Calderón launched his frontal assault on the country’s drug cartels. Here comes a new one.

Mexico saw 105,628 kidnappings last year, according to a survey by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, a government agency. The statistics didn’t show much faith in law enforcement to address the problem -- only 1,317 cases were reported to police.  Read more. 

Mexico Pursuing Vanished Victims of Its Drug Wars

NOTE: Be sure to take a look at the comment section on this article. The overwhelming majority of the comments come out against the drug war and U.S. prohibitionist policies. Many disagree with the headline, saying these are U.S., not Mexican, drug wars. I posted the following comment:

"The bloodshed and the breakdown of law in Mexico is directly caused by the US-backed drug war. The government has spent more than $2 billion taxpayer dollars on escalating the violence in Mexico under the "Merida Initiative". I´m a US citizen who has lived in Mexico many years, and I'm convinced that instead of saying "poor Mexico" we should demand that our Congress cut off the funds to the same corrupt police and military that are often responsible for these disappearances, end the Merida Initiative and send this money to our schools and communities." LC

New York Times: Rosa González cannot shake the memory of the state investigator who was too afraid of reprisals to take a full report, the police officer who shrugged when the ransom demand came, the months of agonizing doubt and, most of all, the final words from her daughter before she disappeared.

“I am giving you a hug because I love you so much,” her mentally disabled daughter, Brizeida, 23, told Rosa hours before she was abducted with her 21-year-old cousin after a party more than two years ago.

In thousands upon thousands of cases, the story may well have ended there, adding to the vast number of Mexicans who have disappeared. Unlike those in other Latin American countries who were victims of repressive governments, many of Mexico’s disappeared are casualties of the organized-crime and drug violence that has convulsed this nation for years. Read more...

Mexico's disappeared

LA Times
Editorial
March 5, 2013

The full human cost of Mexico's bloody drug war during the last six years is only now becoming apparent. Nearly 70,000 people died and more than 26,000 went missing between 2006 and 2012. A scathing new report by Human Rights Watch casts substantial blame for the problem on the country's security forces, which it says have not only been implicated in many of the underlying crimes but have failed to adequately investigate claims by friends and family members of the victims. The result, the report says, is the "most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades."

Human Rights Watch researchers looked into a few hundred cases and confirmed 149 examples of enforced disappearances by security forces. They described a pattern in which uniformed soldiers or police detain people without arrest orders or probable cause — at their homes, in front of family members, at checkpoints or in public settings. The arrests are almost never officially registered and the arrestees are not turned over to the prosecutor's office, as required by law. When relatives arrive to ask about the detainees, the report said, "they are told that the detentions never took place."

These are familiar allegations. But Human Rights Watch also shows how the authorities fail to follow up or investigate — declining to trace cellphones or obtain footage from security cameras or track the bank transactions of the disappeared.  Read more. 

Mexico: Hope grows for the missing

GlobalPost
Dudley Althaus
March 5, 2013 06:01

SALTILLO, Mexico — Burly as a linebacker, Rogelio Elizondo remained dry-eyed as he described scouring websites devoted to Mexico's gangland savagery, hoping to somehow recognize his long-missing son amid photos of fresh victims or decayed remains pulled from clandestine graves.

“You get accustomed to it,” he said.

It’s a task to which he's turned after other options faded for finding the 23-year-old engineering student, also named Rogelio, who disappeared nearly two years ago on a trip near the South Texas border. “You start to assimilate it, little by little.”

Then, asked how the fruitless search has affected himself, his wife and two daughters, 49-year-old's stoicism evaporated in a blink, sobs surging from deep in his chest, tears flowing down cheeks. Read more. 

Mexico counts 26,121 missing during Calderon era

The LA Times 
By Cecilia Sanchez, Daniel Hernandez and Richard Fausset
February 26, 2013

Mexico City - The number of people who went missing in Mexico during the six years of former President Felipe Calderon’s administration stands at 26,121, government officials said Tuesday, a figure that would rank among the worst episodes of "disappearances" in Latin American history.

The official statistic, which includes people reported missing between December 2006 and November 2012, was released at a news conference by Lia Limon, the subsecretary for legal affairs and human rights under new President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office Dec. 1.

Her announcement came days after Human Rights Watch issued a scathing report that blamed Mexican security forces for many disappearances during the government’s crackdown on domestic drug cartels, which began in earnest in December 2006. The report also blamed the Calderon government for failing to adequately investigate the disappearances.  Read more. 

Mexico's 'Crisis Of Disappearance': Families Seek Answers

NPR by Carrie Kahn

February 21, 2013

Maximina Hernandez says she begged her 23-year old son, Dionicio, to give up his job as a police officer in a suburb of Monterrey. Rival drug cartels have been battling in the northern Mexican city for years.

But he told her being a police officer was in his blood, a family tradition. He was detailed to guard the town's mayor.

In May 2007, on his way to work, two men wearing police uniforms stopped Dionicio on a busy street, pulled him from his car and drove him away. That same day, the mayor's other two bodyguards were also abducted. Witnesses say the kidnappers wore uniforms of an elite anti-drug police unit. The three men haven't been seen since.  Read more.  

Mexico Drug War: There is no database with the number of missing from 2006 to date: Secretary of Interior

La Jornada: "The Mexican federal government does not have a database on the number of missing caused by the insecurity and violence from 2006 to date. The only numbers available are those of the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), the Secretary of the Interior, Alejandro Poire admitted yesterday." Spanish original

Drug War´s vanishing victims: The 'open wounds' of Mexico's drug war

CNN.com: "... more than 5,300 people ... have gone missing in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels five years ago, according to the country's National Human Rights Commission. Officials fear the total number could be far higher, because many disappearances go unreported. The drug war's mounting death toll grabs international attention, but forced disappearances are one of the most troubling problems that Mexico faces, says Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a human rights representative for the Organization of American States.

As the number of cases grows, ... parents of the missing have become vocal members of the country's high-profile Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which has staged nationwide protest marches demanding a new drug war strategy, better treatment of victims and greater efforts to find the missing." read more

Drug War - Collateral Damage: Mexican families struggle to find drug war's 'disappeared'

CSMonitor.com: "... thousands of (people) from across Latin America have (relatives who have) vanished in recent years as lawlessness prevails in large swaths of Mexico. Now, family members of the missing are starting to unite to call for more government action to help end the epidemic of disappearances across the country.

... To be "disappeared" in Latin America carries overtones of the military dictatorships and state-sponsored repression of the 1970s and '80s that saw tens of thousands of dissidents go missing across the region. But today's disappearances, largely apolitical, terrorize civil society.

Some of Mexico's disappeared are believed to have been kidnapped by drug traffickers settling scores or beefing up their ranks. Others report that their relatives were last seen in the hands of officials, or at least by those posing in uniform. Often lines are blurry, as many authorities, particularly at the municipal level, have ties to organized crime."

read more