The search for truth in Mexico

 By Roberto Morejón

Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will soon end his six-year term, and he is maintaining an orderly transition with the elected head of state, Claudia Sheinbaum, among whom there is agreement that the Ayotzinapa case is not closed.

During the period of AMLO, as López Obrador is popularly known, the daily work has been to find those responsible for the disappearance of the 43 normalistas in 2014, as promised by the dignitary.

Of course, in September it will be 10 years since the event that shook Mexico and the world, and the arduous investigation continues, with numerous interests at stake.

The outgoing government agreed to another meeting on July 29th, with AMLO's successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, as a sign of the priority given to the issue.

It has not been easy to obtain confessions from the detainees and to find the victims, so the clarification of the case is one of the few commitments that López Obrador has not yet fulfilled.

Nevertheless, the government will provide additional reports to the relatives of the 43 normalistas so that they can know the progress of the investigation.

Meanwhile, society is closely following the progress of the investigations and has noted that the former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, has been able to follow the judicial process on parole after spending almost 10 years in prison for crimes related to organized crime and money laundering.

The Attorney General's Office asked a federal judge to sentence the former Attorney General of the Republic, Jesús Murillo Karam, to 82 years in prison for the crimes of torture, forced disappearance, and obstruction of justice.

Despite judicial decisions such as those mentioned above, the parents of the disappeared boys of Ayotzinapa express logical impatience because, in their opinion, not all the documentation of the case has been shared with them.

From their point of view, it is necessary to investigate the army, especially since the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice reported in 2022 that it was a state crime with the participation of government officials in office at the time; according to official reports, at the end of 2023, 51 arrest warrants were pending, six of them against members of the army. 

The investigation has been slow, given the complexity of the disappearance of 43 young people, which has become a permanent banner of struggle for parents, friends and many citizens.