Interior Secretary Alejandro Encinas made the shocking revelation that directly links the military to one of Mexico’s worst human rights scandals, and it came with little fanfare as he defended the commission’s report released a week earlier. Last week, despite declaring the kidnappings and disappearances a “state crime” and saying the military watched without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students who surrendered to Col. Jose Rodriguez Perez. On Friday, Encinas said authorities were closely monitoring the students from the radical teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa from the time they left their campus until they were abducted by local police in the city of Iguala that evening. A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Encinas claimed the military did not follow its protocols and did not try to rescue him. “There is also information confirmed by 089 emergency calls where it is alleged that six of the 43 missing students were held for several days and were alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there they were handed over to the colonel,” Encinas said. “Allegedly, the six students were alive for four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on the orders of the colonel, alleged then-Colonel José Rodríguez Pérez.” The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations on Friday. The role of the military in the disappearance of the students has long been a source of tension between the families and the government. From the beginning there were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and their possible involvement. The parents of the students have demanded for years that they be allowed to investigate the military base in Iguala. It wasn’t until 2019 that they were given access along with Encinas and the Truth Commission. The Commission’s report states that the army recorded an anonymous distress call on September 30, 2014, four days after the students were abducted. The caller reportedly said the students were being held in a large concrete warehouse at a location described as “Pueblo Viejo.” The caller proceeded to describe the location. This entry was followed by several pages of redacted material, but this section of the report ended with: “There appears to have been apparent collusion between agents of the Mexican state with the Guerreros Unidos criminal group that tolerated, permitted and participated in acts of violence and disappearances of the students, as well as the government’s attempt to hide the truth about the events”. Later, in a summary of how the commission’s report differed from the conclusions of the original investigation, a colonel is mentioned. “On September 30, ‘the colonel’ mentions that they will make sure to clear everything and that they had already taken responsibility for the six students who were left alive,” the report said. In a witness statement given to federal investigators in December 2014, Capt. José Martínez Crespo, who was stationed at the base in Iguala, said the base commander for the 27th Infantry Battalion at the time was Col. José Rodriguez Pérez. Through a torrential rain later Friday, the families of the 43 missing students marched in Mexico City with a few hundred others, as they have done on the 26th of each month for years. Parents held posters of their children’s faces and lines of current students from the teachers’ college marched, shouting calls for justice and counting to 43. Their signs declared the fight for justice continued and said: “It was the state.” Clemente Rodríguez marched for his son Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre, who was the second student identified by a tiny burned bone fragment. Rodríguez said the families were notified last week before the coronavirus report and the six students were released. “It is no longer by omission. It’s that they participated,” he said of the military. “It was the state, the three levels of government were involved.” He said the families had not been informed that any of the arrest warrants announced last week for members of the armed forces had yet been executed. On September 26, 2014, local police took the students from the buses they had driven to Iguala. The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later. Their bodies were never found, although burned bone fragments have been matched to three of the students. Last week, federal agents arrested former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, who oversaw the original investigation. On Wednesday, a judge ordered him to stand trial on charges of enforced disappearance, failure to report torture and official misconduct. Prosecutors allege Murillo Karam created a false narrative about what happened to the students in order to appear quickly to solve the case. Authorities also said last week that arrest warrants had been issued for 20 soldiers and officers, five local officials, 33 local police and 11 state police, as well as 14 gang members. Neither the military nor prosecutors have said how many of those suspects are in custody. It was also not immediately clear if Rodríguez Pérez was among those wanted. Rodriguez, the student’s father, said the arrest of Murilo Karam was a positive step. Murillo Karam “was the one who told us that soldiers could not be touched,” Rodríguez said. “And now it turns out that it was the state that was involved.” In a joint statement, the families said the Truth Commission’s confirmation that it was a “state crime” was significant after years of evidence suggesting it was. However, they said the report still does not satisfactorily answer their most important question. “Mothers and fathers need unequivocal scientific evidence about the fate of our children,” the statement said. “We can’t go home with preliminary signs that don’t fully clarify where they are and what happened to them.” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has entrusted the Mexican military with enormous responsibility. The armed forces are not only at the center of his security strategy, but have taken over command of seaports and taken responsibility for building a new airport for the capital and a tourist train in the Yucatan Peninsula. The president has often said that the army and navy are the least corrupt institutions and they have his trust.
