Mexico dig fails to find 1970s victims

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: AP

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Prosecutors say excavations at a former military base in southern Mexico have concluded without finding any trace of leftist activists who disappeared in the 1970s.

The Attorney General's Office says investigators dug at 44 sites on the former base in the town of Atoyac de Alvarez in Guerrero state. The digs from July 7 to 28 yielded no sign of human remains.

Relatives of the missing activists believed they might have been buried there.

The office said in a statement Monday that investigations would continue into the fate of people who disappeared during counterinsurgency efforts against rebel groups in the 1970s. Estimates of the number of disappeared range from 275 to more than 1,200.

Atoyac de Alvarez is the birthplace of the Party of the Poor rebel group.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MEXICO_PAST_CRIMES?SITE=ALOPE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[readmoreoften]

1. Not to mention the real number of students shot in DF's Zocalo in 1968.

[High Plains]

4. Not the Zocalo, but the Plaza of Three Cultures

Tlatltloco (or something like that; my Nahuatl lacks a bit, okay a lot)

[Judi Lynn]

5. There you go! That did ring a bell, and I looked it up:

The Tlatelolco Massacre
U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968

by Kate Doyle

Introduction

Mexico's tragedy unfolded on the night of October 2, 1968, when a student demonstration ended in a storm of bullets in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The extent of the violence stunned the country. Although months of nation-wide student strikes that preceded October 2nd had prompted an increasingly repressive response from the Díaz Ordaz regime, no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized thousands of surviving protesters and dragged them away.

More shocking still was the cover-up that kicked in as soon as the smoke cleared. Eye-witnesses to the killings pointed to the President's "security" forces, who had entered the plaza bristling with weapons, backed by armored vehicles. But the government pointed back, claiming that extremists and Communist agitators had initiated the violence. Who was responsible for Tlatelolco? The Mexican people have been demanding an answer ever since.

Thirty-five years later, the Tlatelolco tragedy has grown large in Mexican memory, and lingers still. It is Mexico's Tiananmen Square, Mexico's Kent State: when the pact between the government and the people began to come apart and Mexico's extended political crisis began.

To commemorate the anniversary of Tlatelolco, the National Security Archive has expanded on a set of 30 documents we made public in 1998 by assembling a larger collection of our most interesting and richly-detailed records about Mexico in 1968. Many of the documents were many recently released in response to the Archive's Freedom of Information Act requests; all of them come from the secret archives of the CIA, FBI, Defense Department, the embassy in Mexico City and the White House. The records provide a vivid glimpse inside U.S. perceptions of Mexico at the time, and discuss in frank terms many of the most sensitive aspects of the Tlatelolco massacre that continue to be debated today: the political goals of the protesting students, the extent of Communist influence, Diaz Ordaz's response, and the role of the Mexican military and civilian security agents in helping to crush the demonstrations.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/

~~~~~~~~~~
No Time Limits on Mexico’s ‘Dirty War’ Cases, Court Says

By Chris Kraul
November 06, 2003

The Mexican Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a major boost to the government’s efforts to bring so-called dirty-war criminals to justice by ruling that there was no statute of limitations on prosecuting those believed responsible for the kidnappings and disappearances of leftists in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The ruling is expected to revive the efforts of President Vicente Fox’s government to go after those believed responsible for as many as 520 kidnappings and “forced disappearances” of Mexican dissidents. Until Wednesday, many of the cases had been hamstrung by 15-to-30-year limits on prosecutions.

The kidnappings were carried out by secret government agents to snuff out leftist insurgencies and were, witnesses said, done with the approval of top Mexican officials. Many victims are believed to have been tortured and killed at secret military jails and their bodies dumped into the ocean.

In Wednesday’s decision, the court specifically ruled that a special prosecutor’s abduction indictment against 78-year-old Miguel Nazar Haro – the former head of Mexico’s secret police – and two others could go forward because the alleged crime had “a permanent character.”

Commenting on the ruling, Supreme Court Judge Juventino Castro said, “All crimes that affect liberty constitute permanent crimes.”

More:
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/06/world/fg-mexico6

[Judi Lynn]

2. We were kept TOTALLY in the dark about Mexico's Dirty War on leftists, although our own CIA

was active in assisting the Mexican government's suppression. There's so much to overcome from our years of imposed ignorance, information to be retrieved which we were denied by our own corporate media until long after the violent persecution of dissent had passed.

Last Updated: Monday, 27 February 2006, 15:54 GMT
Mexico 'dirty war' crimes alleged

The Mexican government and military committed "crimes against humanity" in the so-called "dirty war" against left-wing rebels, a leaked report says.
The report was prepared for current President Vicente Fox but has not been released. A US NGO has printed material saying Mexicans had a right to know.

The army kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of rebel suspects, says the report, which covers 1964 to 1982.

Mexico's special prosecutor says the report is biased and has been revised.

'Death flights'

The draft report's authors write: "The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which... led it to commit crimes against humanity, including genocide."

They say they base their findings partly on declassified military, police and interior ministry documents and list for the first time the names of officers allegedly involved in the abuses.

The report says that units detained or summarily executed men and boys in villages suspected of links to rebel leader Lucio Cabanas.

Detainees were forced to drink gasoline and tortured with beatings and electric shocks, it says.

Bodies of dozens of leftists were dumped in the Pacific Ocean during helicopter "death flights" from military bases in Acapulco and elsewhere.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4755682.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mexico Launches Search For 'Dirty War' Evidence

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 3, 2008; A18

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 2 -- Teams of investigators and archaeological specialists searched the site of a former military base in western Mexico on Saturday for remains of victims of Mexico's "dirty war."

Human rights activists said the search in the city of Atoyac de Alvarez was believed to be one of the largest ever undertaken in Mexico and represented a landmark in a decades-long struggle to uncover atrocities allegedly committed by the country's military from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.

"We consider this a great conquest in the fight to clarify what happened during that time," activist Alejandro Ju¿rez Zepeda, a spokesman for the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, said in an interview.

Atoyac de Alvarez, a city of about 60,000 northwest of Acapulco, was the scene of key clashes between rights activists and the Mexican military. Rebels based near there are suspected of having robbed banks and operated kidnapping rings to fund their battle against the authoritarian government. Rights activists who lived in the city often demonstrated for an end to one-party rule, equal rights for all Mexicans and economic changes to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/02/AR2008020201637.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Published on Sunday, November 25, 2001 by Reuters
Mexico 'Dirty War' Report Said to Detail Abuses


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A detailed report on Mexico's ''dirty war'' against rebel groups in the 1970s blames government security agencies for the torture and disappearance of hundreds of suspected leftists, a leading newspaper said on Sunday.
The 2,000-page report by Mexico's human rights ombudsman is due to be presented this week to President Vicente Fox, who made a pledge to investigate past human rights abuses part of his campaign last year.

El Universal said the report, which it said it obtained in advance, listed the abductions of 532 activists and concluded that all of them were tortured by their captors.

The report also said it had proof that 275 of those activists then disappeared without a trace, the newspaper said, without making clear the fate of the others.

Fox's resolve to punish past abuses will face a test with the ``dirty war'' report, as human rights groups want Fox to prosecute the officials who allegedly ordered that suspects be tortured or killed as part of the anti-insurgency campaign.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1125-04.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those who imagine political repression and savagery are long passed in Mexico, take time to look around the internetS for any information you might get on "Digna Ochoa," who was murdered in 2001. Here's a program from Democracy Now. There's also a Wikipedia on Ms. Ochoa:

April 27, 2006


The Assassination of Digna Ochoa: A Look at the Life and Death of the Renowned Mexican Human Rights Lawyer
In October 2001, renowned Mexican human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa was found shot dead in her Mexico City office. Despite previous attempts on her life and other evidence pointing to foul-play, Ochoa’s death was declared a suicide by Mexico City prosecutors. We discuss her life and death with award-winning journalist Linda Diebel, author of “Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa” and Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. {includes rush transcript}

We take a look at the life and death of the Mexican human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa. Ochoa was a former nun who went on to represent some of Mexico"s poorest constituents against powerful government interests. She also uncovered torture and other abuses by the Mexican military and police. Ochoa worked on behalf of peasant ecologists in the state of Guerrerro, Zapatistas guerrillas in Chiapas and indigenous Indians in her home state of Verazcruz. At the time of her death, she was defending three men charged with bombing banks in Mexico City to protest against globalization.

In October 2001, Digna Ochoa was found shot dead in her Mexico City office. She was thirty-seven years old and had received many death threats. In fact, when Ochoa was twenty-four she was kidnapped and raped only days after discovering a blacklist of union organizers and political activists in the office of the state attorney general.

Later in her life, she was forced to flee to the United States for her safety. Despite these previous attempts on her life and other evidence pointing to foul-play, Ochoa’s death was declared a suicide by Mexico City prosecutors. Ochoa’s family and fellow human rights activists never accepted the finding and fought for years to have the case re-opened. In February of 2005, prosecutors re-opened the investigation into Ochoa’s death.

A new book by award-winning journalist Linda Diebel provides an in-depth account of Ochoa’s murder and the cover-up that followed. It’s called “Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa.” Linda Diebel is the former Washington bureau chief for the Toronto Star. For many years she was a Latin-America correspondent based in Mexico City. She is a three-time recipient of the Amnesty International Media Award.

Kerry Kennedy is the founder and former Executive Director of the Robert F Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. She is also author of the book “Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World” She devoted a chapter in her book to Digna Ochoa.

They both join us in our firehouse studio.

More:
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/27/the_assassination_of_digna_ochoa_a

~~~~~~~~~

Interview with Digna Ochoa


Interview with Digna Ochoa, lawyer for the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center about the impunity of the Mexican Army in Guerrero and the case of Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia


La Jornada, El Sur
October 13th, 1999
By Eduardo Albarran Orozco


"According to our statistics Guerrero has been one of the states where human rights violations have been endemic...The situation in Guerrero has gone from bad to worse," reported Digna Ochoa, lawyer for the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center. Ochoa indicated that the actions of the government to supposedly combat armed groups such as the EPR and EPRI and narco-traffickers, has led to the "systematic violation of human rights throughout Guerrero, as well as other states."


Ochoa also stated that, "the Mexican Army continues to invade communities, illegally breaking into people's houses and robbing community members of what little they own; some community leaders have been incarcerated while others have simply been executed." Ochoa indicated that the worst part of all of this is that those who have been involved in these cases of human rights violations have been protected under the flag of impunity that protects the Mexican Army. According to Ochoa, "the members of the Secretary of National Defense have been untouchable with regards to the law, and have acted with complete impunity, not only in Guerrero but also in other states."


Ochoa pointed out that one characteristic that has led to these problems is that fact that the police forces in certain states, such as Guerrero, have come under the power of the Mexican Federal Army. The Mexican Army has taken over the functions of the police and public security forces although, according to the Constitution of Mexico, this is not their role to assume. According to the Constitution, the Army is responsible for national security, while the Attorney General of the Republic and the state police forces are in charge of combating drug-traffickers.


Digna Ochoa is currently the defense lawyer for Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, two farmers and members of the Organization of Peasant/Ecologists of the Sierra of Petetlan and Coyuca of Catatlan, who are now imprisoned on charges of being members of the EPR as well as being narco-traffickers. In the 5th District Court in Iguala, the defense presented proof that these two farmers were tortured at the hands of the Mexican Army. At the same time, it clearly identified the perpetrators and those responsible for the farmers torture in this incident. During this past September, the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center presented a letter to the Attorney General of the Republic, Jorge Mafrazo Cuellar, soliciting that he instruct the Federal Public Investigator to initiate an investigation against the accused military personnel in this case. However, nothing has been done to initiate the investigation.

More:
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/guerrero/mil/jornada101399.html

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digna_Ochoa


Photos of Digna Ochoa, google images. Click thumbnails:
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-37,GGLD:en&q=Digna+Ochoa

Thank you, AlphaCentauri, for posting this information.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Here's an odd article from the more recent past, referring to our CIA and Mexico rough stuff:

Mexico Seizes Official in 'Dirty War' Case of 70's
By TIM WEINER
Published: February 20, 2004

The former chief of Mexico's secret police, Miguel Nazar Haro, was arrested here on charges of kidnapping a leftist leader 29 years ago, federal officials said Thursday.

He is the first former government official arrested in connection with crimes committed during Mexico's ''dirty war'' against the left, which lasted from the 1960's to the 1980's. Hundreds of suspected enemies of the government were arrested, tortured and killed by state agents.

Mr. Nazar Haro, 79, was an officer in the Federal Security Directorate, which served as an intelligence service and a secret police force. He led the directorate from 1978 to 1982; it was disbanded in 1985.

He was an important liaison for the C.I.A. during the 1970's and early 1980's, providing the United States with information on leftists throughout Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, American officials say.

The C.I.A. blocked his indictment by a federal grand jury in San Diego in 1982, immediately after he left his post as chief of the secret police. He was suspected of involvement in an auto-theft ring that stole hundreds of cars in California and brought them to Mexico, according to the chief federal prosecutor in San Diego at the time.

The prosecutor, William H. Kennedy, asserted then that C.I.A. officials had told him that Mr. Nazar Haro was their most important source in Mexico and Central America. The Federal Security Directorate gathered information used by the Reagan administration to justify assertions of Soviet and Cuban subversion in the region.

The C.I.A. argued successfully that the importance of the information gleaned from Mexico's secret police overrode the interests of United States law enforcement.

More:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E7D7103DF933A15751C0A9629C8B63



Head of secret police, Miguel Nazar Haro