Mexico CityThere will be no more meetings between the parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students who have been missing for almost a decade and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador because, the representatives of the victims explained, the investigations were halted in 2022. “We did not end well,” they said.
“When, let’s say, we touched the sensitive fibers of the Mexican Army, there was no further progress and there came a break, a crisis, even in the relationship, in the dialogue that we have maintained to this day,” said in an interview the legal representative of the families, Vidulfo Rosales, member of the Human Rights Center of the Mountain “Tlachinollan.”
In statements to the media upon leaving what was the last meeting of the families with the federal president at the National Palace, the lawyer said that they trust that with the incoming government of Claudia Sheinbaum there will be a new path to pursue the case and achieve the truth, justice and the location of the young people who forcibly disappeared on September 26, 2014.
“There was a dialogue, but a tense dialogue, with a lot of tension in the last meetings, so we did not end well with this government, we ended badly. However, a new one is opening up, a new government is coming, we hope that in that one the dialogue can be rebuilt, the Ayotzinapa case can be put back on track and a new route can be drawn up that will lead us to resume the important lines that exist, because today there are important lines of investigation that are stopped there, that have not been followed since 2021,” he stressed.
After the meeting with López Obrador this morning, the parents see no point in continuing to confront each other, so even though there are 34 days left for the president to conclude his administration, they see no point in holding more meetings with him.
This, Rosales said, is because except for a couple of arrests, one of them relevant, that of Marco Antonio Ríos Berber, “La Pompi,” and some on-site searches, in this and other meetings the federal government has not provided new information that the parents consider relevant.
“We have had no progress, no response, and the parents’ position is that this is the last meeting, so we do not see any conditions for a next meeting, in which meetings are nothing more than confrontations, so I think the parents were very clear in that regard. There is no point in coming to confront us when we are not having substantive or substantial results,” explained the litigant.
Rosales accepted that the López Obrador government maintained an attitude of resolving the case at the beginning of his administration and until 2021, however, when “the Army was touched, that no longer existed. It was no longer possible to move forward and there came a break, a crisis, even in the relationship, in the dialogue that we have reached until today.”
“Do you think the next government will touch the army?” he was asked.
—We don’t know, we will have to see that in the first days of her government, the first meetings we have with her (with the president), in the new path we draw up regarding how this case will continue.
He stressed that the families’ demand is for truth and justice, and for the whereabouts of the missing students to be established.
A group of relatives and parents of the missing students from Ayotzinapa arrive at the National Palace, where they will hold a meeting with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in Mexico City, on August 27, 2024. Photo Luis Castillo
Peña, Conflicting Visions
On the other hand, prior to the meeting, Rosales differed from the position of the prosecutor of the Ayotzinapa case, Rosendo Gómez Piedra, regarding whether or not there is a possibility of summoning former President Enrique Peña Nieto to testify.
This follows the new controversy arising from the fact that the official version of these crimes in the previous government, known as the “historical truth,” was constructed in meetings at Los Pinos, which were headed by the former president, as had already been revealed by the former president of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice for this case, Alejandro Encinas, in his second report.
While the prosecutor said that Zerón’s statements about the meetings where Peña Nieto was present represent “only the expression of a person who is involved in the events and who is on the run,” and therefore did not consider it sufficient to summon him to testify, the lawyer for the family said that there are elements.
“If Tomás Zerón is saying that he is a key player (Peña Nieto), that he was one of the architects of the ‘historical truth’, that he was commissioned to build this investigation and if he says that he was given orders, well, it is important, that statement he made should be taken very seriously. It is not in vain that Encinas already outlined this in his second report, he already put it on the table.
“I think there are no exceptions in the investigation here. If there is a line, if there is evidence that indicates a probable responsibility for irregularities in the investigation, for covering up, I think they should be investigated. Just because he is a former president of the Republic does not mean that he will not be touched.”
#VideosLaJornada Relatives and parents of the #43 Normalistas missing from #Ayotzinapa They arrive at the National Palace where they will hold a meeting with President Andrés Manuel @lopezobrador_.
Video: Jorge Angel Pablo Garcia. pic.twitter.com/GMmLodrWBr
— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) August 27, 2024
#didnt #parents #Ayotzinapa
– 2024-09-03 06:56:19
