LETTER FROM MEXICO
<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/26/0/0/6240/4160/664/0/75/0/719d0b4_1695772271461-ap20052066044470.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/26/0/0/6240/4160/556/0/75/0/719d0b4_1695772271461-ap20052066044470.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/26/0/0/6240/4160/600/0/75/0/719d0b4_1695772271461-ap20052066044470.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/26/0/0/6240/4160/664/0/75/0/719d0b4_1695772271461-ap20052066044470.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/26/0/0/6240/4160/700/0/75/0/719d0b4_1695772271461-ap20052066044470.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/26/0/0/6240/4160/800/0/75/0/719d0b4_1695772271461-ap20052066044470.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="Demonstration at the entrance to Mexico City's National Archives, where people demanded " memory,="" truth="" and="" justice"="" for="" women="" survivors="" of="" the="" "dirty="" war"="" 1970s,="" pictured="" here="" on="" february="" 20,="" 2020."="" width="100%" height="auto">
A 59-page report, described as a mini "bombshell," hit Mexico's intelligence services hard. And as usual, they pretended to ignore it. Dated August 15, the report was drawn up by the Mechanism for Access to Truth and Historical Clarification (MEH), a group of specialists and historians charged with investigating human rights violations committed between 1965 and 1990. The MEH was created by presidential decree in 2021.
At the time, President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, or "AMLO," declared that the archives of all federal administrations were to be handed over to the National Archives for examination by the MEH. The MEH is due to submit a report in September 2024, explaining what happened during the so-called "dirty war," when Mexican authorities resorted to torture, persecution and assassination against their supposed enemies.
Although investigators have made progress on this huge task using other sources of information, including eyewitness accounts, the archives have not been handed over. Worse still, documents already in the possession of the National Archives appear to have been carefully and secretly erased by the intelligence services. Today, historians watch helplessly as data is erased and boxes are emptied. Yet the archives of the intelligence services, known as the "archives of repression," are crucial to the work of the MEH.
In 2001, Vicente Fox, the first president elected after 71 years of domination by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, pledged to launch a process of memory and justice for this period, following the example of other Latin American countries. Although he did not keep his promise, the intelligence services were nonetheless forced to hand over their documentation for the period from 1970 to 1985 to the National Archives. According to an investigation by the investigative magazine Contralinea, this represents a total of 4,223 boxes.
Along with the archives, the National Intelligence Center, then known as CISEN, obtained authorization to send agents to guard them. These agents controlled the famous gallery of the Lecumberri Palace where the archives were stored for 16 years, without ever allowing historians full access. "No country in the world has made the mistake of entrusting the preservation of its archives to its intelligence services," said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a doctor in political science and one of the four curators of the MEH.
"Management" of the intelligence services until 2018 led to certain documents being subtly removed. For example, the box dedicated to the 665 militants of the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) assassinated during the 1988 presidential campaign is clearly labeled, but its contents have disappeared. Similarly, the files on the notorious drug traffickers of the 1980s (Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo and Enrique Camarena Salazar) are empty.
You have 50.62% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.