By Dr Peter Watt, University of Sheffield

A glimmer of hope has emerged in the struggle against impunity for human rights violations in Mexico. Human rights organisations continually document ongoing abuses by the authorities, yet against a background of silence, denial and intimidation, the outlook and prospects for truth and justice often appear bleak. Besides ongoing injustices, there are past crimes the Mexican government says human rights campaigners should forget, like that of the forced disappearance of Rosendo Radilla from Atoyac de Álvarez in Guerrero state 35 years ago at the height of what is now labelled Mexico’s own guerra sucia, or dirty war.

The 'dirty war'

As a community leader and activist, Radilla became an obvious target for a military and government which by the late 1960s had resolved to counter dissent and protest in the countryside with intimidation and violence under the rubric of ‘national security’. Deemed by the government of Luis Echeverría to be one of the greatest threats to national security was the school teacher turned revolutionary guerrilla fighter and leader of the Party of the Poor (PDLP), Lucio Cabañas. President Echeverría would ultimately dispatch 24,000 troops to Guerrero to defeat Cabañas and counter the widespread sympathy his campaign on behalf of Guerrero’s impoverished had roused. The consequences were ugly and only now is their true nature coming into the open.

Challenging impunity for Mexico's 'crimes against humanity'

In an unprecedented landmark ruling in December 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organisation of American States (OAS) condemned the Mexican government for Radilla’s forced disappearance. In its defence, the government claimed it could not be held responsible for crimes committed 35 years previously. However, the Court ruled that because the government has continually failed to investigate Radilla’s disappearance, the crime is ongoing and cannot be relegated to the past. And for his family, no closure is possible given that Rosendo Radilla is still missing.

Crucially, the Court recognised Radilla’s disappearance within the context of systematic human rights abuses against the civilian population, observing that these constitute crimes against humanity. It has ordered Mexico, as a signatory of the American Convention on Human Rights, to reform the military code which guarantees impunity to military personnel and to investigate the circumstances of Radilla’s disappearance after he was detained by soldiers at a military checkpoint in 1974.

In addition, the government must pay reparations to Radilla’s family, pay the legal expenses of the human rights organisations which brought the case and publicly acknowledge his disappearance by raising a monument to commemorate him in the centre of Atoyac. For those in the military and government who have vigilantly kept the truth from public scrutiny and treated human rights campaigners and family members of the disappeared with contempt, the Court’s decision will no doubt provoke some uneasiness.

Human rights in the state of Guerrero

Guerrero in the early 1970s was among the poorest states in Mexico and was ruled by an alliance of corrupt PRI state government,  wealthy landowners and the corporations extracting timber and other natural resources of the region. Misery and poverty were rife and over 60 percent of guerrenses (inhabitants of Guerrero) were illiterate. By the late 1960s, a number of social movements had already attempted to challenge the status quo and the massive inequalities in distribution of wealth in Guerrero and Mexico. But the regime of President Luis Echeverría – regarded abroad and in the Mexican media and among intellectuals as a liberal – ruled with an iron fist.

Only recently, thanks to the tireless efforts of human rights organisations such as the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (CMDPDH), the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared and Victims of Violations of Human Rights in Mexico (AFADEM), spearheaded by Radilla’s daughter, Tita, has the dirty war become part of a national debate. The Radilla case is highly significant because it represents a massive victory for and vindication of those, not least Radilla’s family, who have campaigned for an investigation into his disappearance since the late 1970s and who have constantly met with official denial and secrecy.

Throwing light on the past

Such a high-profile legal ruling has additional ramifications in the sense that an investigation into Radilla’s abduction will inevitably mean scrutinizing the historical context and circumstances within which it occurred, potentially opening new ground in exposing the dirty war against the civilian population in the 1970s and 1980s, a question of greater magnitude than that of one, although important, disappearance.

It is the systematic nature of the campaign to liquidate and crush ‘subversives’ who sympathised with and aided guerrilla leader, Lucio Cabañas, which the Mexican government has concealed over the past four decades. The Court’s decision now threatens to expose those responsible and shed light on a past reminiscent of dirty wars elsewhere in the continent; one in which 1200 people were disappeared, thousands more incarcerated without trial and many more tortured in military camps and prisons throughout the country. A past in which 650 natives of Guerrero were forcibly disappeared, over 400 of whom, like Radilla, originated in the municipality of Atoyac de Álvarez, their whereabouts still unknown.

Aerial bombardment of villages, military curfews, cutting off food supplies to villages and rounding up all males over the age of 14 and removing them forcibly were among the actions one might expect of a ruthless military dictatorship, not of the ‘liberal’ regime of President Luis Echeverría and his much flaunted ‘democratic opening’.

A symbolic decision

The challenges facing the campaign to hold the Mexican government to account have been considerable. Many communities remained traumatised after years of what effectively became a military occupation, having witnessed members of their families and communities disappear and others returning with stories of torture.

Guerrenses were – and still are – among the most impoverished and marginalised in Mexico. Little recourse was available to those (some of whom were illiterate) who sought to mount a legal case on the disappearance of their loved ones. Local police often handed over civilians to the military, while others who attempted to file complaints with the authorities frequently found themselves under arrest. In effect, martial law operated in a Guerrero in which the government saw itself at war with the civilian population. This was compounded by scant attention from the national media and an absence of human rights organisations in Mexico. 

The IACHR’s important and symbolic decision is thus testimony to the determination and persistence of Tita Radilla and human rights organisations like AFADEM and the CMDPDH and an illustration of the power of popular activism and organising to salvage this brutal episode in Mexico’s recent past from the margins of history.