For many U. They describe how given the choice between repression and negotiation, political stasis or change the regime predictably, inexorably chose violence to preserve the status quo. A Dispirited Military. By early , the Mexican army had stepped up its campaign. All four military battalions stationed in Guerrero were operating against the rebels.
At the time, the military as an institution was struggling to combat declining morale. Its public image was also suffering. There was lingering resentment at the tarnishing of the military's image in the wake of the massacre at Tlatelolco in , when army troops were used to crush student demonstrators, sparking national and international outrage.
To make matters worse, the counterinsurgency campaign against the guerrillas in Guerrero was faltering, despite ever-increasing commitments of manpower and resources. Given the publicity surrounding the effort, one United States embassy report pointed out in December, "the failure must be even more galling.
Failure in the field prompted increasing secrecy, obfuscation and cover-up by the regime on the occasions when it discussed the rebels in public. Rebel forces carried out three spectacular kidnappings in , reaping millions of pesos in ransom as a result. The developments caused concern in Washington, where State Department analysts wondered in September if Mexico had an "emerging internal security problem. The President, apparently, agreed.
It is clear from the documents that Mexican armed forces were given increasing freedom to operate in Guerrero, whatever the consequences for Mexican civilians caught in the crossfire.
Dirty War Tactics. The year opened with the death of Genaro Vazquez on February 2 in an automobile crash while fleeing the authorities. By mid, after two separate ambushes carried out by Party of the Poor forces against army troops operating in Guerrero killed 26 soldiers and captured more than 50 weapons, the U.
Guerrero posed special problems, however. The terrain there inhibits the maneuvers of the security forces, and on the most recent occasions the guerrillas have been able to engage army units at times and places of their choosing, inflicting heavy casualties.
The army has responded with sweeping roundups on a fairly indiscriminate basis, and recently there have been reports in the Mexican press that prisoners were interrogated under torture. Embassy reporting in indicated a growing hard line on the part of the government toward the guerrillas and anyone linked to them. Lately, there have been indications also that GOM [Government of Mexico] has murdered some prisoners after extracting all information they have to give. The newly savage techniques would have devastating effects.
The Legacy of Violence. As United States intelligence analysts observed in , prolonged repression on the part of the government "would greatly reduce the President's ability to work out solutions to Mexico's more fundamental problems of rural and urban poverty, a veritable population explosion, and the growing disillusionment of the younger generation. The killers fired from a vehicle; one then got down and stole the cell phones from the victims. Isabel Ayala had recently been demanding justice over the killing of her brother.
Military Wiki Explore. Popular pages. Project maintenance. Register Don't have an account? Edit source History Talk 0. The three are confirmed as missing.
They allegedly had taken part in the kidnapping that November of businessman Enrique Pineda Cuevas. Pineda was later rescued. Erasmo was released after two weeks, but a year later he was grabbed again and tortured anew, he says. The treatment this time included a novelty: His tormentors forced chile-laced mineral water up his nose.
In Atoyac, the oldest of the villagers, gray-haired and stooped, trudged forward with their faded memories. They clutched pictures, from tiny ID photos to life-size portraits, to prove their missing relatives were once real and vital. Under the shade of a mango tree, the commission lawyers listened patiently to their stories. Some witnesses had testified many times before, but others were appearing for the first time.
Skillfully, the lawyers picked up on what was new and probed for details. After one man described how his brother had disappeared in , he went on to tell about his own brief detention in a military barracks in It is very important to remember.
Who held you? Were you mistreated? The man recalled several names, to be cross-checked later against lists of the known missing and of suspected rights abusers. Importantly, the witness, Agustin Barrientos Flores, said he had never testified before, so this was fresh information. Espetia gave him a telephone number to call in case he should remember more. Many witnesses, such as year-old Romana Bello Cabanas, can neither read nor write, and put an inked fingerprint over their names.
Her son, Carmelo Juarez Bello, was rounded up in the village of Ticui in September , accused of being a guerrilla. He was 26, the father of four children. She abandoned the children to her mother-in-law. Bello then struggled to raise her grandchildren on her own. One of those children, Adolfo Juarez, is now He was just a year old when his father disappeared. Too many innocent people were taken away.
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