This transcript is a draft that may be subject to change.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. While the kidnapping of several Americans in Mexico has been in the news, today we look at a story that has received less attention: the thousands of Mexicans who remain missing in that country.
Recently, four Americans who traveled to Matamoros, Mexico, one of them to receive plastic surgery, were attacked. Two were killed, two others were held captive for days, and before being rescued one of them was shot several times. Additionally, three Latina women from a Texas border town who crossed the border have been missing since February after visiting a market in Montemorelos, Mexico.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Mexicans remain missing in unresolved cases, some going back decades. This includes a case from 2014 that we have closely followed, that of the 43 young people from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ school who were attacked and forcibly disappeared.
We now go to Guatemala City, where we are joined by Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at the National Security Archives organization, who has new details about this story, extracted from the records on Ayotzinapa in the four million emails and files stolen from the Ministry of the National Defense of Mexico by an anonymous group of hackers known as “Guacamaya”. Doyle is co-producer of the Reveal media podcast “After Ayotzinapa” and has just published a report as part of her organization’s work on this case.
Kate, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what she discovered about what happened to the Ayotzinapa 43, and the attention that is paid from the United States when American citizens are kidnapped and murdered in Mexico?
KATE DOYLE: Sure, Amy. Nice to meet you. Good morning to you and Juan. Well, the documents that we found within the Guacamaya leaks indicate that the same impunity that dominates all cases, the thousands of cases of disappeared persons in Mexico also, of course, dominated and continues to dominate the Ayotzinapa case, the forced disappearance of 43 students of the [Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa]. Some of the documents that indicate the attitudes towards the school at the beginning are documents from the years 2006 and 2007 of surveillance, of espionage. There was, it is very clear, there was infiltration of the school at that time and it continues today. And the documents, the intelligence reports, paint the school, the students and their parents, their legal representatives, the human rights organizations that represent the students and the parents, as subversives, they say that the school is permeated with foreign ideas, et cetera, a language of counterinsurgency. The Mexican Army has always considered the school within that framework.
So, the vast majority of the documents we have found show not only a failure to act by the military on the night of the attacks, during the enforced disappearances of the students in 2014, but also a deliberate and coordinated effort within the Ministry of the Defense of Mexico to protect themselves, to hinder the investigations and to ensure that their soldiers were not going to [ser] interviewed or investigated by the Government, nor international experts, outside researchers. And there’s a lot more detail in these documents, but that gives you a bit of the idea.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Kate I wanted to ask you. When Andrés Manuel López Obrador was campaigning for the presidency, he promised to solve the case of the Ayotzinapa students. Do Guacamaya’s documents indicate a change in the military or government after he AMLO rose to power?
KATE DOYLE: Thanks, John. Yes, you are absolutely right. When President López Obrador took [el cargo] In 2018, he publicly and strongly promised his unconditional support for the parents and promised that he would solve the case, that is, with a new investigation, with a truth commission. He also called all his dependencies, including the Mexican Army, [para] cooperate, contribute, open any necessary information to the researchers. And it is evident, from these Guacamaya documents, that although the Ministry of Defense Secretary, first Cienfuegos at that time, at the time of the 2014-2015 disappearances, and his successor, Secretary Crescencio Sandoval, both had a speech public supporting the investigations, but behind the curtain, in their secret documents, their communications with each other, [era] something else entirely, even in internal communications during the current government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
So, for example, Juan, Defense Secretary Crescencio Sandoval said publicly at an event in 2020 that he was absolutely willing to open up all of his files to investigators. There were also, and still are, soldiers, very few, four so far, imprisoned, awaiting their trials, accused of links to organized crime in this case and also to the disappearances of the young people. And he says that he supports any outcome of the investigation. Internally, the same Secretary of Defense, Crescencio Sandoval, wrote, the same in 2020, a personal letter to President López Obrador, in effect painting one of the imprisoned soldiers, accused of the crime of disappearance, painting him as an innocent person, who It has nothing to do with this case, poor thing, he has a two-year-old son and he needs it. In other words, there is a double discourse, it is true, on the part of the military towards this case.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And can you compare the government’s efforts in these cases, especially the military, with the recent events of the four Americans who were kidnapped and murdered in Matamoros?
KATE DOYLE: Sure, John. Well, on the one hand, it’s good, it’s good to know that Mexican investigators can produce results in cases of organized crime violence, because in the case of the four North Americans attacked, two killed and kidnapped, as you say, the government immediately put all resources to resolve the case, investigate those responsible.
And not just the government, Juan, but also the organized criminal group responsible. They also wrote a letter naming the people involved in their criminal group, naming those responsible for the attacks against the Americans. So, obviously, when they do not want there to be impunity, there is no impunity. But in the cases, the vast majority, almost, almost all of the cases of the disappeared Mexicans, which I now believe [son] more than 112,000 documented people with names missing in Mexico, in the vast majority of these cases there is no justice, there is no search, there is no solid investigation and that leaves tens of thousands of people, relatives, colleagues, friends, sons, daughters , with nothing on their loved ones. So it’s a very strong and sad contrast.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you and do people know what happened? Mexican investigators say exactly what happened to the Ayotzinapa 43. Can you also talk about the importance of having access to military and police records in Mexico, and what are you investigating?
KATE DOYLE: Absolutely. Well, look, Amy, the investigation by the previous government under President Enrique Peña Nieto was a false investigation, a fabricated investigation, [unos] results or an invented resolution. And only when the new president, López Obrador, arrived and ordered the creation of a special prosecutor’s office in the case, a new investigation, a truth commission, new searches, everything, only then, only then [empezaron] really solid research in this case. But even with all this and even with a declaration, order, yes we can say, directly from the president, both public and behind closed doors to his dependencies, his Government, his Army, to share any information, any document, file, with It’s clear to the investigators, Amy, reading these documents—those few documents that we’ve found, because we’re just beginning our investigation of the “Macaw Leaks”—it’s clear that the military didn’t give up all of their files, they didn’t open all of their doors to the researchers.
And I know from a source within the current investigation that investigators now, as of today, don’t have most of the documents that we put on our website on Friday. So it is very clear that the military continues to hide information from the investigation into the disappearance of the 43.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Kate, who are the Guacamaya hackers who have obtained all this military and intelligence information?
KATE DOYLE: Well, it’s an anonymous group, I can’t say because they haven’t declared who they are, of course. But what they do say is that their hacking, their decision to steal —because it is a theft of information from these military computer systems, not only in Mexico, but also in Peru, El Salvador, Chile, I think there are five countries , information from the defense institutions, the security forces in all these cases—, they themselves say, Guacamaya says that their decision to publish these documents is to challenge the repression of many governments in Latin America, the use of an institution of the governments, the military institution as a weapon against its own citizens with espionage, with violence, with forced disappearances.
So, there is a very well and explicitly stated intention by the group that this act of hacking the documents of the Armies is an act of resistance.
AMY GOODMAN: Kate Doyle, thank you so much for being with us. Senior analyst at the National Security Archive organization who worked with his team to examine records related to the Ayotzinapa case that are among the four million emails and files stolen from Mexico’s Ministry of National Defense by an anonymous collective of hackers known as “Guacamaya”.
Your organization has just published a new report with its findings. Last year, Kate co-produced the “After Ayotzinapa” podcast on the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal outlet as part of her organization’s work on this case.