The Mexican army’s role in the disappearance of 43 college students, its participation in covering up the facts and its alleged links to organized crime are now at the center of a case that has shaken the nation.
The president of the Truth Commission, Alejandro Encinas, says that the false, official version announced at the time by Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam “was designed at the highest levels of the federal government” after meetings in the presidency, then in the hands of Enrique Peña Nieto.
The students had hijacked buses to get to a protest in Mexico City and were intercepted in Iguala — possibly because one of the buses contained a drug shipment.Three members of the military were arrested this month, among them José Rodríguez Pérez, who as a colonel commanded the local army base in Iguala at the time of the students’ disappearance. The Truth Commission report alleges he ordered the killing of six students days after their abduction.
Santiago Aguirre, a human rights attorney for relatives of the victims, said around 50 people are imprisoned awaiting trial. In August, the Attorney General’s Office issued 80 new warrants, but Aguirre said most just opened new cases involving people already in custody. Accusations of human rights abuses against the military were common during the “dirty war” of the 1970s and ’80s. They were especially harsh in the poor, opium poppy-growing state of Guerrero. Some abuses have continued — as well as allegations of officers linked to drug cartels.
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