By Kathleen Bohné
Below you will find two excerpts from the Apr. 24 edition of “La Semana” newsletter. To read the complete articles and subscribe, please visit www.TheMexpatriate.com.
“We are getting closer to the truth…with the collaboration of the government…but there are important names in play. Will this administration be willing to bring those involved to justice?”
This is the crucial question of the Ayotzinapa case, posed by Denise Dresser on the Mar. 30 roundtable show, Es la Hora de Opinar. On Mar. 28, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) presented their third report on “the 43”—the first since López Obrador took office—further discrediting “la verdad histórica” (historical truth) as told by law enforcement about events in Iguala, Guerrero on September 26, 2014.
The GIEI was formed in March 2015 at the behest of the parents of the missing students, and in coordination with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Five experts in criminal law and human rights with extensive experience in Latin America conducted their own review and investigation of the evidence and presented their first report in September 2015. This report demonstrated the weakness of the government case, focusing in particular on the garbage dump at Cocula where the students were supposedly shot and then their bodies incinerated. The ashes were allegedly then discarded in the Río San Juan. The GIEI’s work exposed the lack of forensic evidence supporting this version of events, which was further debunked in the most recent report from three weeks ago. The group left Mexico in 2016 after their diplomatic immunity ended and a smear campaign by the authorities had made it clear they were no longer welcome. The GIEI was invited to return by López Obrador’s administration in 2019 and the team arrived in March 2020.
As shared at their Mar. 28 press conference, the GIEI obtained a video taken by a military drone that shows members of SEMAR (Department of the Navy) at the Cocula dump in the early hours of Oct. 27, 2014, a visit that was not recorded in any of the case files. Over the course of several hours, 40 different people can be observed walking around the area, removing what appear to be large plastic bags out of pick-up trucks, setting a fire and clearly taking none of the precautions appropriate to a crime scene. In 2016, the GIEI had already found evidence of an unofficial visit by the lead investigator, Tomás Zerón, to the site at Río San Juan on Oct. 28 with a suspect in custody, where on Oct. 29 the PGR (Attorney General’s Office) would “find” the remains of one of the students, Alexander Mora. The report also documents the “systematic use of torture” as a means of extracting confessions that support the government narrative. “The illegal actions include falsification of procedural records, unlawful detentions and torture, alteration of possible crime scenes. We must remember that the identity of the bones of Alexander Mora is not in question, which implies not only a distorted version of events but also that there must be evidence of how it was constructed.”
Tren Maya “Tramo 5 Sur” is suspended by a judge
“Karst hydrology is fabulously complex and imperfectly understood…Below the surface—if karst can be said to have a surface—aquifers fill and empty over centuries, there are labyrinths through which water circulates over millennia, there are caverns as big as stadia, and there are buried rivers with cataracts, rapids and slow pools.”
Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey
The largest underwater cave in the world is found in Quintana Roo. In 2018, divers discovered the connection between the extensive systems of Sac Actun and Dos Ojos: the total known length is 215 miles of flooded caverns. «This immense cave represents the most important submerged archaeological site in the world, since it has more than a hundred archaeological contexts, among which is evidence of the first settlers of America, as well as the extinct fauna and, of course, of the Maya culture,» according to explorer Guillermo De Anda in a National Geographic article on the discovery.
In January of this year, the Tren Maya “Tramo 5” route was changed to keep the project on schedule. Instead of passing through the center of Playa del Carmen via an elevated track, the southern section of the track will run 60.3 km through the jungle that parallels the federal highway to Tulum. The new route will put the train in close proximity to renowned cenotes (sinkholes) and caves, part of the peninsula’s vast and fragile karst topography.
On April 19, a federal judge in Mérida, Yucatán ordered a temporary suspension of the construction of “Tramo 5 Sur” after a group of divers filed a lawsuit against the controversial project. The ruling stated that the project could cause “imminent and irreparable damage to the area…as it does not have environmental impact approval.” Images of bulldozers tearing down trees near the mouths of caves have catalyzed a national movement to put a stop to Tramo 5. A Twitter account opened in March called “Sélvame del Tren”—a play on words using “selva” or jungle and “save me from the train”—now has 22,000 followers and has received widespread attention after uploading a video that included statements from Mexican celebrities as well as biologists and conservationists. On Monday, April 25, representatives from the group will meet with the president, who has accused critics of being “pseudo-environmentalists” who haven’t paid attention to the devastation of the ecology of the region until now…
