“Systematic state violence” in the ‘dirty war’: special commission

The Mexican State is responsible for serious human rights violations perpetrated in the dirty war between 1965 and 1990, years in which violence was implemented in a systematic and widespread manner not only against the insurgency, but also against a wide range of dissidents and communities, many more than had been historically recognized, including indigenous people, sexually diverse populations, Guatemalan refugees and journalists.

This is stated in the final report of the Historical Clarification Mechanism (MEH) of the Truth Commission, prepared by Abel Barrera, David Fernández Dávalos and Carlos Pérez Ricart, who maintain that the repression resulted in at least 8,594 victims of detention and forced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial execution, massacres and other violence, including sexual violence. In addition to the forced displacement of 123,034 people in 113 different events.

The investigators, whose responsibility ends in September, say that the perpetrator institution par excellence of human rights violations in that period was the Army, Not only because the armed forces were directly responsible for many of the atrocities committed, but because they constituted one of the ideological pillars of a presidential regime that presented itself to society as civil, demilitarized and revolutionary..

In the report It was the State (1965-1990)which consists of six volumes and will be made public today, highlights that the work carried out in just over two years documents 46 massacres, within which at least 385 deceased people were identified. Among them, those that occurred in Monte de Chila, Puebla; in El Tajito, Sinaloa; in Yahualica, Hidalgo, and in El Ámbar, Chiapas.

The number of victims resulting from this investigation exceeds that recorded in previous investigations. Last April, the National Human Rights Commission, in its Recommendation 98VG/2023, confirmed 814 victims, in addition to the 275 it had already documented in 2001.

Regarding the progress presented in the report, which has already been delivered to the Truth Commission, chaired by the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Arturo Medina, and which aims to clarify what happened in the dirty warthe researchers highlight that with the National Search Commission they identified, located and exhumed bone remains of seven people who were victims of violence between 1967 and 1971 in Ajuchitlán del Progreso, Guerrero, in September 2023.

The investigation warns that in addition to the repression against political-military organizations, student and labor-union movements – which are addressed in the report by Commissioner Eugenia Allier – 11 groups of victims were identified, belonging to peasant, indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities; activists of urban-popular movements; from areas violated by the imposition of development policies and refugees on the southern border of Mexico.

The report is part of the work of the five committees that make up the Truth Commission, which must deliver its results before the end of the period for which it was created, next September, before President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.