Here we are on a bright Friday, holding up 43 solemn young men’s faces outside the Mexican embassy.
We’re wearing black, including black Covid masks, and the photographs have been laminated for us at Amnesty International’s office This demonstration by members from all over London (and some from hundreds of miles away) was perfectly organized by Tilly Lavenás and Sheila Royce. They knocked at the embassy door and presented our letter and a large framed artwork: “Ayotzinapa” over a calligraphic list of the 43 names.
Then Sheila turned to face us from the embassy steps and read out:
“Benjamin Asencio Bautista, 19. Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!” and we shouted “Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!” It’s the chant that has been used by protesters for seven years. “Alive they were taken away, alive we want them!” Then a silence of half a minute, then the next of the 43 names, and again “Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!”
During that noontime hour, faces did not appear at the embassy windows, but a few persons hurried in and out.
At Ayotzinapa, a small town in a rural part of Guerrero state, is a teachers training college, whose students have a habit of political activism. On September 26 in 2014, many of them went to another town, Iguala, to protest against hiring practices that discriminated against the poor and the indigenous. As they started back, municipal police opened fire on the buses in which the students and some others were traveling. Six people were killed, many were wounded, some of the students got away, and these 43 “disappeared.”
Since then, the tangled tale of blame, scapegoating, and cover-up has changed many times. The Wikipedia article (under “Iguala massacre”) is outdated, but there is a recent BBC report.
The first investigation, under the then Mexican president, has been discredited (the chief investigator has had to flee the country!); there are a few bits of gruesome and disputed evidence; the underlying problems in Mexico are the power of the drug cartels, rich from smuggling to the US, and collusion by them with underpaid police and under-trained military. But the investigation has had some international help, and 43 families deserve it to be pressed genuinely until they have the truth.
The photo I was clutching, and trying to hold rigid in the breeze, was of a boy with an Aztec-looking surname, Tlaten. The photos, products of many recopyings, were blear, mottled with spots that suggested bloodstains.
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Thank you for this report, Guy, and for your witness for these victims of terrorism.
In their relations with law enforcement, government officials, and journalists, the Mexican cartels have a saying, “plata o plomo” — silver or lead — i.e., either take our bribes and follow our wishes, or we will kill you. One crucial piece of this horrible puzzle is that the cartels’ weapons are all manufactured in the United States. Drugs go from Latin America to the US, money goes from the US to Latin America, money goes from Latin America to the US, guns go from the US to Latin America, and the cycle continues.
In 1913, shortly before his death, the US journalist and gadfly Ambrose Bierce wrote, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”
Concise, well written assessment. The global small arms trade will some day get the attention it demands.
Admirable. AMLO needs to nominate a national inquiry committee with sits for well-known international human rights groups.
I’m afraid that if they keep on loading all the burden of a dangerous investigation like that on a sole, semi-retired judge, chances are, he won’t survive it, unfortunately. Cheers