Politics: AMLO caught in the crossfire between the Army, prosecutors and the families of the disappeared

MEXICO - Report 03 Oct 2022 by Guillermo Valdes and Francisco González

The events of a September eight eight years ago in which 43 protesting students were hunted down, abducted and murdered in and around Iguala, Guerrero, has emerged as a major point of contention pitting the presidency, the country’s Armed Forces and the Office of the Attorney General (FGR) against one another. Since that time, relatives of the victims, various human rights organizations and politicians, including current President López Obrador, have labeled as a cover-up the results of the official investigation, which concluded that a local drug trafficking organization had mistaken the students for a rival gang and, with local police support, had murdered them, for the most part erasing all trace of their remains.

Upon taking office in December 2018, AMLO promised he would solve the case and deliver justice for the victims. Almost four years on, Deputy Minister of the Interior Alejandro Encinas presented what was billed as the report of a Truth Commission for the case. Based on the commission’s conclusions, a special prosecutor requested 83 arrest warrants against officials from that time with the Office of the Attorney General and the government of Guerrero, in addition to members of the Army.

There were immediate doubts as to just how solid the commission’s case might be, but the problems for Encinas and AMLO were greatly complicated when on September 24, the FGR suddenly, and without providing any explanation, canceled the requests for 21 of the 83 arrest warrants, including 16 directed at Army members and the former attorney general who conducted the initial investigation.

With the Army still the target of allegations, a severe conflict arose between it and Encinas, and another between the Truth Commission and the Office of the Attorney General. The president has become trapped between his promise to solve the case, which was equivalent to validating the claim it had been a crime of State and pointing to the military as its perpetrators, and his project to militarize his government and win the political support of the Armed Forces.

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