BY PETER GELLERT
MEXICO CITY — Human rights organisations and the Mexican left have long argued that more than 600 political activists were detained by government security forces from the late 1960s to the 1990s and never heard from again. Many of these disappeared during the 1970s, in what has been termed Mexico's "dirty war" against radical groups.
The presentation of "the disappeared" has been demanded in protest demonstrations since the 1980s, in large part thanks to the tireless efforts of Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, mother of an activist who disappeared in 1972. Ibarra heads the Eureka Committee, which is comprised of mothers and other family members of the disappeared.
Pressure on the government has increased since the November assassination of prominent human-rights lawyer Digna Ochoa in Mexico City. The prime suspects for the unsolved murder are army officials angered by Ochoa's defence of political prisoners.
In a public ceremony in the Mexican capital on November 27, Mexico's official National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) presented President Vicente Fox with a 3000-page report blaming the government for the disappearance, torture, and murder of at least 275 activists. No-one has ever been formally charged with such abuses.
As part of his campaign promises to promote democracy and to break with official impunity, Fox pledged to create a truth commission to investigate the "dirty war".
CNDH president Jose Luis Soberanes told Fox that the state bore responsibility for the practice of forced disappearances of radical activists. He also gave the president a sealed package with the names of 74 government and military officials the CNDH accuses of involvement in torture or forced disappearances.
In response, Fox announced that his administration would appoint a special prosecutor to proceed with a criminal investigation. A five-member civil commission will advise the special prosecutor, who will examine each disappearance on a case-by-case basis. Fox ordered the Attorney General and the defence minister to fully cooperate with the special prosecutor. The defence force is widely blamed for most of the abuses and thus far has steadfastly refused to allow civil jurisdiction over its members.
The Mexican president said: "We are changing the way power is exercised in Mexico. We are taking a great step towards the consolidation of the rule of law, and we are laying the foundation to permanently eradicate impunity in our nation." This was the first time that the government has acknowledged the possibility of massive human rights violations during the "dirty war".
Human rights and opposition activists such as Ibarra have responded cautiously to Fox's initiative. The Reverend Miguel Concha, head of the independent Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Center said the report was "barely a first step toward the truth".
The Miguel Agustan Pro Jurez Human Rights Center goes further, charging that the Fox administration is more concerned with its international image than in clarifying the facts, and reproaching the government for implying that the disappearances are a relic of the past, since such accusations continue to surface to this day.
Attention has naturally centred on the role of the army and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which governed Mexico for 70 years before being defeated by Fox in 2000.
PRI leader Dulce Maria Sauri, while acknowledging the crimes and the impunity enjoyed by those responsible, has argued that the army and security forces could not be held responsible because the perpetrators were acting as individuals.
Former president Luis Echeverria, in office from 1970-76 when many of the disappearances took place, has insisted that he is not afraid of an investigation and that the army operated "righteously and patriotically".
The army itself is quite unrepentant. Retired General Alberto Quintanar Alvarez was quoted in the Mexico City daily La Jornada on December 7, 2000, as saying that far from being a "dirty war", what occurred was "a cleansing operation of Maoists, Trotskyists ... students supported by trade unions and political parties who were destabilising the country". Quintanar acknowledged what has long been suspected: that the army did not act alone but under direct orders of two presidents and that paramilitary fascist-like groups such as the White Brigades were in fact created and under the direction of the interior ministry.
While the cry for justice for the disappeared is broadly supported in Mexican society, whether it will be achieved is another question. Powerful political interests — in the first place, those of the army — are at stake.
From Green Left Weekly, January 16, 2002.
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