(ANSA) – ROME, AUGUST 31 – Purépecha indigenous people have blocked at least six state and federal highways in the western Mexican state of Michoacán on the occasion of the International Day of the Victims of Forced Disappearances, to protest the disappearance of more than 115,000 people in the country. The Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán, which brings together more than 70 communities of the Purépecha, Nahuatl, Mazahua and Otomí ethnic groups, told Efe that the roadblocks are causing serious inconvenience. The Council is demanding that the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador intervene to clarify the forced disappearance of five members of the Guzmán Cruz family and two of their friends, which occurred in 1974 at the hands of alleged Army soldiers. They were all inhabitants of the Purépecha villages and would have been victims of persecution and coercion after being classified as “social activists” and “political opponents” by the government of former President Luis Echeverría Álvarez. The Council says it has discovered evidence that some members of the Guzmán Cruz family were killed in the so-called “death flights” in which 183 people, indicated on a list, were thrown from airplanes into the Pacific Ocean between 1972 and 1974, by the Army and the now extinct Federal Security Directorate (DFS) and the Guerrero Judicial Police. (ANSA).
2024-08-31 17:55:29