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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Radilla's Associations May Have Brought His Troubles |
| 2011-07-17 |
| To see a map, click here. To read Rantburg reports on Wednesday's ruling on Mexican Army jurisdiction in human rights cases, click here, here and here. By Chris Covert Last Wednesday's ruling by the Mexican Supreme Court that the Mexican Army must relinquish jurisdiction to local and state courts in cases involving human right cases caused quite a stir in Mexican military circles and in some political circles. In just the last six months, the Mexican Army has been expanded by equivalent of two combat divisions, and deployed in some of the country's worst trouble spots in northern border states, and a new national security law currently held up on procedural grounds are but two of the major problems facing an organization that enjoys enormous popular support. But back starting in the late-1960s and ending around the mid-1980s, the army was employed by a succession of Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) presidents starting with Gustavo Diaz Ordaz which used the army as a blunt cudgel against radical, communist and socialist movements in the country which threatened to upset the political status quo. The start of the Dirty War can be dated to the Tlatelolco massacre of October 2, 1968, when at least 44 unarmed individuals were shot by Mexican security forces including Mexican Army in Mexico City. From that point on until the mid-1980s, Mexican security forces throughout the country dealt with radical movements in the country using military power deployed and ordered by Mexican presidents, especially concentrating their effort on more extreme hotspots, including Guerrero state on the west coast of Mexico. Guerrero was then and still is to this day a contrast of Mexican style modernity with its Acapulco resort and surrounding environs, and the grinding poverty of an agrarian society in the rest of the state. Guerrero was also the birthplace of several anti-government socialist and communist movements, including Army of the Poor, led by Lucio Cabañas, and Asociacion Civica Nacional Revolucionaria, led by Genaro Väzquez Rojas. Both of these men and their organization used violence against government facilities, including kidnapping and armed robbery to achieve their aims, and to fund their movements. And it is clear from online sources both of these leaders knew each other, although their respective movements may not have cross paths. One common association both men had was they both knew and had visited Rosendo Radilla Pacheco. Cabañas and Radilla both had the common link that they were both born and lived in the Atoyac de Alvarez municipality in Guerrero. In an article published by Milenio Saturday, Radilla's daughter Tita, described Radilla Pacheco as a simple farmer who managed to teach himself to read and write inside of three months, who subsequently devoured history and law texts, who loved to sing and play guitar, and who typed out his own text on a typewriter he bought for his agrarian reform movement in Guerrero. Tita is also vice president of Mexican Association of Relatives of the Detained, Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations (AFADEM), the organization which eventually brought the lawsuit that was decided last Wednesday. According to the article, Tita was 21 years old, and pregnant with her second child the day her father was arrested by the Mexican Army at a checkpoint, August 25th, 1974. Her brother Radilla Martinez, was then only 11 and a witness to the arrest. Apparently Radilla Martinez upon learning his father was about to be taken away, burst into tears, but his father told him to stop crying and gave him money. One of the site commanders at the time allowed Radilla Pacheco to give money to his son before he was taken away. Radilla Pacheco was 59 years old when he disappeared. Historical records in the form of now declassified US State Department memoranda originally written in January, 1974 and in March 1974, paints a scenario of Guerrero was a state under constant siege. Several incidents were recounted in one cable in whcih Lucio Cananas' grpup was named as the perpetrator of several kidnapping and ambushes. Among the actions recounted are:
The report goes on to detail five other incidents that took place after a brief period of relative calm, at least one of the incidents being another ambush of a Mexican Army patrol November 18th, 1973 which killed five soldiers and two guerrillas, and wounded seven soldiers and two guerrillas. The cable states the incidents listed are a few of the most spectacular incidents between 1971 and late 1973. During that time, one of Radilla Pacheco's associates, Vazquez Rojas, died after a brief period of captivity at the hands of the Mexican Army in February, 1972. Another State Department cable,this time authored by an FBI legal attache published brief thumbnails of Mexican armed radical groups including Lucio Cabañas' activity within his Army of the Poor. The FBI called the organization Partido de los Pobre (PLP), probably not its official name or acronym. According to the cable, the PLP supported itself with kidnapping, extortion and bank robberies, and had limited itself to the state of Guerrero. The statistics maintained by Tita's AFADEM and others paint a stark portrait of a government's reaction to the multitude of political threats and pressures it faced during the 1970s. According to Dr. Peter Watt of the University of Sheffield, a total of about 1,200 individuals disappeared during the Dirty War nationwide. Of 638 individuals known by AFADEM to have disappeared, 438 were from the state of Guerrero. Of those, 400 originated from Atoyac de Alvarez municipality, where Radilla Pachecho was born, lived and from where he disappeared. Now, 37 years later, Tita, now 58 and living on a farm of 13 hectares, mother of five, grandmother of 17, appears to have won a small personal victory over a large and imposing political system. Her memory of a father who refused to go to school after learning to read and write, instead choosing to support his family on the farm, who loved to drink coffee before going out into the field, lives on. If reports detailing the issues with military jurisdiction in years old unresolved cases are true, the state, local and federal courts in Guerrero may be about to experience a huge flood of lawsuits stemming from this tiny, but brutal, part of Mexico's Dirty War. No legal system of any republic in history has faced such an oncoming burden, but for all the weight of the many potential lawsuits that may spring from this ruling, it could dwarf the potential political fallout the the PRI may experience. Stunning local and state political victories, a telegenic putative PRI candidate for president of the republic, Pedro Pena Nieto and his beautiful soap opera actress wife, Angelica, may not be enough to spring the PRI into Los Pinos. Indeed, the potential for forcing the PRI into political irrelevance cannot be understated. |
| Posted by:badanov |
