Inquiry into Mexico’s ‘dirty war’ obstructed by military and other agencies, board says

An independent commission charged by Mexico’s president with documenting human rights atrocities committed by the state has accused the country’s military and other government agencies of obstructing their investigation and threatening the country’s transition towards justice and democracy.

A blistering report released on Friday details years of abuses committed by Mexico’s government and its armed forces between 1965 and 1990, a period known as the country’s “dirty war” when it was ruled by an authoritarian one-party system which violently repressed any form of dissent.

Efforts by students, peasant farmers and Indigenous groups to challenge the regime were violently repressed, particularly by the Mexican military. Hundreds were extrajudicially executed, with their bodies sometimes thrown from planes into the Mexican Pacific in what were called “death flights”. At least 1,000 people simply disappeared, their whereabouts still unknown.

Arguably the most well-known incident during that period was the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, when members of the military and the president’s personal guard mowed down hundreds of peaceful protesters in Mexico City.

Previous attempts to bring perpetrators of these and other atrocities to justice had failed, but President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an avowed leftist elected in 2018, promised to make amends. In 2021 he created an independent truth commission with the goal of finally uncovering the horrors of the past and hold wrongdoers accountable.

The independent researchers were able to document thousands of abuses committed against students, Indigenous people, journalists, LGBTQ+ people and others, including arbitrary arrests, massacres and torture. Among the most shocking revelations in the report were the massacres of 300 Indigenous people in the 1980s and the killing of 100 transgender women in the early 1990s.

But throughout their investigation, the researchers’ efforts were constantly stymied by the very entities most often responsible for these abuses: the Mexican army and intelligence services.

“This institutional reticence was one of the difficulties, perhaps the main difficulty, that this [commission] has had to face,” the investigators wrote. “The denial, concealment or destruction of documentation of historical interest, mainly in the archives of the Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Center, as well as the reluctance of various institutions to hand over their archives for review, ignoring a presidential mandate, was part of an attempt by those responsible for state violence to hide the truth, and in doing so, perpetuate impunity.”

According to David Fernández Dávalos, one of the commissioners, investigators faced obstacles at every turn. Researchers were at times made to wait hours to access key archives by the defense ministry. Once inside, files requested would suddenly have pages missing, other times files were moved or hidden without explanation.

“Some colleagues were witnesses [to] documents from the archive actually being destroyed,” he said.

The scathing accusations against the Mexican army come at an awkward time for the president, known commonly as Amlo, who is entering the final months of his term. Confronted by spiraling cartel-fueled violence, the president increasingly relied on the military to take charge of security tasks.

But beyond tackling violence, the president ballooned the defense ministry’s budget and relied on them for an array of tasks, including accomplishing flagship infrastructure projects such as a new Mexico City airport and a tourist train in southern Mexico.

Related: Amlo promised to take Mexico’s army off the streets – but he made it more powerful

And as their role in Mexican society became increasingly vital, the military has appeared more and more successful in stymying any efforts to investigate their role in human rights atrocities.

Last June, the Washington Post revealed that the government official charged with coordinating the dirty war truth commission had his phone hacked with Pegasus spyware – malware only the military has access to. In July a group of international experts who had spent eight years investigating the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college in 2014 left the country for good . They too accused the military of obstructing their investigation by withholding key documents.

Now, once again, it appears the Mexican army has succeeded in repelling a years-long effort to penetrate its historical defenses, ensuring that the crimes of its past will remain locked away, backed by a president who has granted them more power than any leader in the nation’s history.

“The president has clearly opted to protect the army,” said Fernández, the commissioner. “It’s very clear in the case of Ayotzinapa, and now in our case it’s evident once again.”