Ayotzinapa: What do the thousands of text messages intercepted by the DEA reveal about the disappearance of the 43 students?

Between the night of September 26 and the early morning of September 27, 2014, a total of 43 students from the Normal School of Ayotzinapa disappeared in Iguala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. They had arrived in that city to take buses by force with which they intended to travel to Mexico City in order to participate in a demonstration, something they did every year. Nine years later, new revelations are known that confirm the direct participation in the case of organized crime in complicity with police and civil and military authorities.

The American newspaper The New York Times had access to some 23,000 unpublished text messages that were intercepted by the DEA in 2014, and witness statements and investigation documents.

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After analyzing the material, the conclusion reached by the NYT is that Virtually every branch of government in the state of Guerrero had been secretly working for the Guerreros Unidos criminal group for months., responsible for the kidnapping of the students. Thus, this drug cartel had at its disposal all the machinery of the State not only to traffic drugs with total freedom, but it was easy for it to interfere in the investigation and concealment of this unsolved case.

People carry signs of the disappeared students during a march in Mexico City on September 26, 2022. (Photo by Rodrigo ARANGUA/AFP). (RODRIGO ARANGUA /)

From the messages it appears that one of the police commanders even persecuted the rivals of the criminal group on the orders of united warriors.

It is also confirmed that the kidnapping and death of the students was due to a mistake of the criminal organization Guerreros Unidos.

On the day of the events, the students who were traveling in buses were ambushed by shots by the police in the city of Equal to.

A total of 43 young people were handed over to united warriors. These criminals believed that they were part of a rival cartel that was going to dispute their territory. In addition, an investigation after the events concluded that one of the buses seized by force contained drugs camouflaged by that cartel to be transported to the city of Chicagoin United States.

A student from Ayotzinapa paints slogans at the entrance to Military Camp 1 during a demonstration to demand the extradition of a Mexican official investigated for the disappearance of 43 students. (Photo by ALFREDO ESTRELLA / AFP). (ALFREDO ESTRELLA /)

According to the New York Times, the DEA intercepted the 23,000 messages in 2014 while investigating drug trafficking from united warriors in the suburbs of Chicago. never shared with Mexico the messages because they did not trust their authorities. They were just delivered last year.

The documents consulted by the New York Times establish that the military bribed by the narcos were closely monitoring the kidnapping of the students but they never came to help them.

The new evidence revealed now allows us to know that the students were taken in groups to different places and some were kept alive for days, with the knowledge of the police and the military.

According to the American newspaper, an affidavit from a lifeguard who was on the cartel’s payroll he says he received two phone calls the night of the kidnappings. In one of them one of the police commanders asked him “to whom should I deliver the ‘packages’”, referring to the kidnapped, and in another a cartel assassin asked him who brought him “the packages.”

Said lifeguard had another unofficial job: gathering information for the cartel. For months he sent a leader of united warriors up-to-the-minute updates on all law enforcement movements.

The outlet also reported that according to a cartel member, some of the students were taken to a house, killed and dismembered, and later burned in crematorium owned by a coroner’s familywho was also on the cartel’s payroll.

The cartel member told the authorities that the ovens used to be used to “disappear people without a trace”.

That forensic He was in charge of sending the cartel photos of corpses and evidence at crime scenes, the messages show.

The Ayotzinapa Case. (AFP).

In the text messages intercepted by the DEA, drug dealers and their associates complained about the soldiers’ insatiable greedand they referred to them as “putos” to those who had “in the bag”.

They also talk to bribed Mexican government officials, even insulting and threatening them.

“Do you want me to put your councilman’s prostitute in order, or do we kill him?” a cartel member asked a local mayor.

The mayor replied: “I will bring it to you. He is a good worker “.

A lieutenant even armed hitmen linked to the cartel united warriors and, according to a witness, he helped the police try to hide his involvement in the crime from the students.

While a coroner spoke of receiving cartel cars and declared his allegiance to a leader of united warriors in Chicago, calling him “my boss.” “I will never turn my back on you.” “You are like my family.”

The parents and relatives of student Julio César Ramírez Nava attend his wake on September 30, 2014. (Photo by YURI CORTEZ / AFP). (YURI CORTEZ /)

Why did the Guerreros Unidos cartel execute the 43 students who were training to be teachers and were not involved in organized crime?

The New York Times maintains that in the months leading up to the kidnapping, according to wiretaps, the cartel had become increasingly paranoid, beset by deadly infighting as it tried to defend its territory against the advance of its rival narcos. .

So when dozens of students came to Equal to and they took the buses, which were very similar to those that the cartel used to smuggle drugs to the United States, the traffickers mistook the convoy for an enemy incursion and gave the order to attack it.

Nine years have passed since the crime and so far no one has been sentenced. The government of former President Enrique Peña Nieto was accused of orchestrating an extensive cover-up to hide the involvement of the military and police in the kidnapping, particularly those of the powerful army.

Earlier this month, the Mexican government reported that legal proceedings have been initiated against a total of 116 people involved in the case, including 32 cartel members and 49 municipal police officers.

Charges have also been filed against at least 14 members of the National Defense Secretariat.

Source: Elcomercio