Judge orders criminal action against those responsible for the dirty war

Gustavo Castillo Garcia

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 25, 2024, p. 7

For the first time in the history of Mexico, a federal court determined that in the fight against guerrilla groups, particularly in the state of Guerrero, the Mexican government committed state terrorism and has therefore ordered the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to take criminal action against the civil and military authorities of the 1970s and 1980s linked to these actions in that entity.

The origin of this sentence is the filing in 2018 of an amparo trial to investigate the omissions committed in the preliminary investigation SIEDF/CGI/454/2007 regarding the search and location of Rosendo Radilla Pacheco (disappeared by elements of the Army on August 25, 1974), and that the necessary proceedings be ordered to clarify the facts.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government carried out counterinsurgency actions and committed serious human rights violations in various areas of the country, including the forced disappearance of hundreds of people, using the so-called death flightsfrom the Pie de la Cuesta Military Air Base in Guerrero, which consisted of throwing the bodies of opponents into the sea after they had been subjected to torture and executed by the military.

The court determined that there is evidence proving the existence of responsibilities, as perpetrators, of former President Luis Echeverría Álvarez, as well as of military personnel who are still alive and participated in these actions, one of whom even became head of the National Defense during the government of Ernesto Zedillo, General Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, who at that time held the rank of captain.

In the sentence issued on August 22 by Karla María Macías Lovera, head of the ninth district court based in Irapuato, Guanajuato, it is stated that there have been government omissions and indolence to investigate and bring to justice those responsible for extrajudicial arrests and executions, torture, rape of women and children, as part of a systematic action, as well as the existence of clandestine prisons and the so-called death flightsin addition to the fact that there are official documents that sufficiently prove the guilt of the highest military and civil authorities in these events.

In the court ruling, of which you have a copy The Dayit is noted that there is evidence that supports the use of violent means, such as blocking food supplies (…), forced displacement of the population and destruction of entire communities in the period from 1971 to 1984.

Systematic action

The judge’s conclusions were based on documents that make up various preliminary investigations initiated in both the military and federal justice systems related to cases of forced disappearance during the dirty warbut they were dispersed and not analyzed as a whole.

It is shown that the violence exercised by the armed forces during the repression in Guerrero was not the result of isolated actions or individual decisions, but part of a systematic pattern, planned and directed from the highest levels of military command. and that this was known to President Luis Echeverría Álvarez (who died on July 8, 2022) in his capacity as supreme commander of the armed forces.

In the analysis of documentary information and testimonies that appear in criminal cases such as the one brought against Generals Francisco Humberto Quirós Hermosillo (deceased on November 19, 2006) and Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro (assassinated on April 20, 2012), it is proven that members of the Army declared before the military court that in the death flights 1,500 opponents who were part of the guerrilla group led by Lucio Cabañas Barrientos were thrown into the sea.

The 665-page judgment states: Numerous testimonies from former military personnel who worked at Military Air Base Number 7 in Acapulco, Guerrero, confirm the existence of this practice (…) they describe how the victims, often blindfolded and with their hands tied, were taken to the base, executed by shooting them in the back of the head, and then thrown into the ocean from an airplane..

The court ruling reveals that flight logs were prepared documenting the schedules and the crew that participated in the death flightsthe participation of senior military officers who also coordinated these operations.

The judge maintains based on the evidence given to her that there has been failure to investigate seriously and professionally and that it was a government cover-up strategy.

The ruling also orders that the FGR give notice to its Internal Affairs Prosecutor’s Office to investigate and sanction the prosecutors who have incurred in omissions in this matter, from 2011 to date; that spaces for memory be created at the Pie de la Cuesta Military Air Base, in the facilities of the Second Military Police Battalion at Military Field No. 1 and orders that all the country’s councils and federal authorities remove commemorative symbolsphotographs, statues, road names that honor or exalt Those who formed part of the public power apparatus that carried out state terrorism.