No progress, trial for the massacre of 2 years ago in Camargo

jessica xanthomila

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday February 4, 2023, p. 7

Faced with the lack of justice and access to the truth about the massacre in Camargo, Tamaulipas, where 19 people, mostly migrants, were murdered and burned, for Álvaro Miranda the doubts about the death of his son –one of the victims– they do not stop He doesn’t understand how Osmar could have been killed like that on January 22, 2021. Why, instead of killing them, didn’t they ask us for a ransom to free them?he constantly asks himself when remembering the facts.

Although there are 12 state police officers arrested in this case, accused of homicide, more than a year after their arrest, the trial has stopped, says Yesenia Valdez, coordinator of strategic litigation at the Foundation for Justice, which accompanies the families of the victims. .

“It has been a very slow process… we have not even been able to enter the oral trial debate to determine responsibility,” he asserts. We are facing one more example of systemic impunity that we suffer in our country, while the families are still waiting for that justice and reparationhe emphasizes.

They did not ask for ransom

In a telephone interview, Álvaro, who lives in Comitancillo, Guatemala, recalls that his son Osmar, just 19 years old, liked to play soccer and decided to go to the United States. to work, buy their things and build their house, because here we live in extreme poverty.

expresses that misses me and hits me a lot to think about why he was assassinated and why those who had the migrants, from Guatemala and El Salvador, did not ask for a ransom, as happened with his nephews a year before Osmar left for the United States.

“We know of the groups that exist, for example, that of The Zetaswho kidnapped a couple of my son’s cousins ​​and asked for 10,000 dollars to pay for their freedom… Even those authorities (if they had been involved), would have asked us for money and it would have been deposited here, although under loans”, manifest, and demand let justice be done.

Most of the victims of the massacre were young people between 20 and 30 years of age, including four women, and all the people were a fundamental part of their family nuclei, that is, parents, children who collaborated in the family maintenance, and had the objective of coming to work in the United Statessays Valdez.

In an interview, the lawyer warns that with the delay of the hearings of the process against the detained police officers the reluctance on the part of the authorities to fight against impunity continues to be provoked.