Mexico’s Fruitless Hunt for Justice/

Mexico’s Fruitless Hunt for Justice/Ioan Grillo, a British journalist who covers Latin America, is the author of “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.”

The New York Times | 18 de septiembre de 2015

'Sept. 26 will mark a year since one of the most heinous crimes in modern Mexico, when police officers and drug cartel hit men are believed to have abducted 43 students and killed another six students or passers-by in the town of Iguala. There have been even bigger mass killings by cartels in the past, also involving the security forces who are supposed to be fighting them. But the Iguala attacks caused far more outrage because they targeted students, the police were on the front line, and they were close to the capital.

The images of the missing youths and their distraught families shook Mexican society, provoking hundreds of thousands to take to the streets demanding justice. It became a watershed case, emblematic of the killings and disappearances that have ravaged this nation.

With the world watching, the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto had the chance to prove it could deliver justice for the victims. But rather than becoming an exemplary case, the investigation has shown the deep flaws among Mexico’s police force and prosecutors. A report released on Sept. 6 by a group of experts, appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, concluded that there had been a slow response, possible torture of suspects, and damage to key evidence and crime scenes. The justice system itself was put on trial — and found guilty.

The vices detailed in the report are typical in Mexico. Torture is widespread, as shown in a recently released video of police officers in Jalisco beating teenage robbery suspects as they questioned them. Corruption in the security forces is rife, as shown by the arrest of prison guards and intelligence agents accused of helping the kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, escape prison through a tunnel with electric lights and air vents. And investigators are often simply incompetent, as shown in the daily mishandling of crime scenes.

The result is a double tragedy of horrendous crimes going unpunished while innocent people rot in jail. Many Mexicans have lost all faith in the justice system. Even before the report, the families of the victims and many journalists refused to believe the official account of what happened to the students.

Many Mexicans have no confidence in anything the government says. When Mr. Guzmán escaped, a survey by the newspaper Reforma found that 54 percent of respondents didn’t accept that he had fled through a tunnel as the government had announced; instead, people claimed he had walked out the front door. This breakdown of trust has painful implications. In recent years, thousands of Mexicans have formed vigilante militias to take justice into their own hands. More unrest may well follow.

The Mexican government, with the support of the international community, needs to make a herculean effort to strengthen its justice system and restore some credibility. And this can begin with a renewed effort to deliver justice in the Iguala attacks. Mr. Peña Nieto said he had asked investigators to take into account the findings of the experts’ report; now he needs to follow up with concrete action.

The failures in the Iguala investigation leave serious doubts about who exactly was involved, what their motive was, and what happened to the victims. Prosecutors claim that hit men from the Guerreros Unidos cartel burned the students on a bonfire at a garbage dump. The authors of the report argue that the evidence shows such a fire never happened there — and the search needs to continue. The police found the charred remains of two of the students, allegedly in a nearby river, but there has been no sign of the others.

This confusion tears at the students’ families; they have no closure. Across Latin America, mothers still search for their children who disappeared in “dirty wars” that governments waged in the 1970s and 1980s. It is chilling that cartel killers, and the corrupt police officers they work with, use this same tactic of disappearing victims today. The gangsters don’t just disappear people to hide evidence; it is also a potent form of terror.

Mexican agents have arrested more than 100 people suspected of having taken part in the Iguala attacks, including city police officers, the mayor and his wife, and reputed Guerreros Unidos assassins. Some have confessed. But accusations that they were tortured undermine the cases against them. If some are the killers but are freed because of a bungled prosecution, it would only add to the tragedy. The case needs to be strengthened with solid physical evidence. State and federal forces also need to be more thoroughly questioned about their actions on the night of the abductions.

The Iguala report questions the motives behind this brutal attack. The students, from a nearby teachers’ college, had gone to the town to commandeer buses that they wanted to use to travel to a march in Mexico City. The report recommends pursuing the theory that students unwittingly took a bus in which heroin, or its precursor, opium paste, was stashed. The Guerreros Unidos produce heroin to supply the surge in use across the United States.

Prosecutors have also cited an alleged Guerreros Unidos hit man, who said the group (mistakenly) believed the students had been infiltrated by a rival gang. Yet another theory is that the police were trying to stop students from disrupting a public event held by the mayor and his wife, both of whom are believed to have been in league with the cartel.

Whatever drove the killers that night, cartels and corrupt police officers have a track record of disposing of innocent civilians, sometimes for just being in the wrong place. After his son was killed by cartel thugs, the poet Javier Sicilia toured cities across Mexico packed with thousands grieving over their loved ones. According to a government count, cartels and the security forces fighting them killed more than 83,000 people between 2007 and 2014. Some journalists claim it is many more.

The failures in the Iguala investigation have taken a toll on Mr. Peña Nieto, who has fallen to a 35 percent approval rating. He did not invent the problem of cartel bloodshed when he took power in 2012. But, as president, he needs to take responsibility and lead real efforts to fix the justice system during his remaining three years in power.

And when the United States supports Mexico in fighting cartels, it cannot just provide hardware like Black Hawk helicopters. It needs to help Mexico rebuild its institutions from the bottom up.