Searching for the disappeared
By Soledad Galiana
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The only terrorist is the Mexican government
- Rosario Ibarra
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Rosario Ibarra is the president of the Committee for the Defense of
the Prisoners, the Prosecuted, the Disappeared and the Political
Exiled, an organisation created in Mexico in 1974 by the relatives of
people who vanished following their witnessed detention by army and
police forces.
Since its foundation, the Committee has completed the successful
release of 148 disappeared people. Rosario, apart from being a
tireless human rights defender, was a senator for the Democratic
Revolutionary Party from 1994 to 1997, candidate for the Mexican
presidency for the Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT) and has been
very active in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in the
Mexican state of Chiapas.
Rosario Ibarra's struggle began after the disappearance of her son,
Jesus Pedra Ibarra. Rosario's son was involved in a political
struggle when he was arrested. ``My country is a very rich country and
has a lot of natural resources, but the people have suffered from
hunger and malnutrition. Because of this unbalance, our children were
involved in the struggle. And the government responded in a very
severe manner. They called our sons terrorists and in fact the only
terrorist is the Mexican government. They are practicing a way of
state terrorism that has been carried to its ultimate consequences,
because the torture, the robbing and kidnappings are very severe
crimes that are carried out by the government and are not covered by
any law.''
Amnesty International report points out that most of the latest
disappearances in Mexico have taken place in the context of alleged
counter-insurgency and anti-narcotics operations and victims include
members of peasant organisations, indigenous people, students and
teachers.
In many cases, there is strong or even incontrovertible evidence of
official participation in disappearances. However, the detentions are
repeatedly denied by army, police and the Mexican government and
neither the victims nor their relatives appear to have any effective
resource before the law for seeking redress for these gross human
rights violations.
After two years of looking for her son through all possible
government institutions ``and after [being met with] a permanent
denial'', Rosario decided to find the mothers of other people who had
disappeared in similar circumstances as her son. This was the
beginning of the Committee for the Defense of the Prisoners, the
Prosecuted, the Disappeared and the Political Exiled.
Then years after its creation, the mothers decided to add the word
Eureka to summarise their fight - Eureka means ``I have found'' in
Greek - as they have found alive 148 out of the 500 disappeared.
``We are the relatives of the 500 disappeared people. The more active
group is of around 100 mothers in all the national territory. The
most numerous group will be from the state of Guerrero, as 360 people
disappeared in that area during Luis Echeverria's mandate. My son
disappeared from the North of Mexico at that time, on 18 April 1975,
in Monterrey. If he is still alive, they have taken away more that 20
years of his life''.
Her quest for her son has made her a public figure, something that
Rosario resents. ``I am a very well known figure because they took my
son away from me. If my son had not been taken from me I would not be
important, I would not be known by anybody... But I would be happy,
like another 500 mothers in Mexico whose sons/daughters have been
taken from them''.
The mothers have met every Mexican president ``including your
undesirable neighbour Salinas, who is living here in Dublin'', without
getting any response or information about the fate of their
relatives. Rosario thinks that ``this is the largest case of impunity
in Mexico, where the government have carried out all the range of
crimes: murder, kidnaps, massacres... And we have been fighting,
struggling for the last 23 years.''
``We do not know what is happening, whether our sons/daughters are
cold, hungry, suffering torture or if, in fact, they are dead...
Whatever is left of our sons is ours. It does not matter what they
are, they belong to us. These 23 years of fighting will be worthwhile
if we can save a life.''
Following national and international campaigns on their behalf, some
have reappeared a week or month later bearing signs of torture. In a
small number of cases the bodies of the disappeared were subsequently
recovered with evidence that they were extrajudicially executed.
After years of dealing with the Mexican authorities, Rosario feels a
deep bitterness towards them. ``The government are two-faced. They lie
when they say that in Mexico we do not have problems. We called them
the Portrait of Dorian Grey. The nice face is for the international
audience. The horrible face is presented to the Mexican themselves.''
Rosario will never forget her meeting with Carlos Salinas de Gortari
- former president of Mexico, who is now living in Dublin and whose
brother Raul has been sentenced for his involvement in the murder of
another presidential candidate.
``When Salinas de Gortari was the Mexican president, he received seven
mothers of the disappeared and promised us that we were going to see
our children in a period of twenty days. This was at the time he was
preparing the Treaty of Free Trade (signed by Mexico, Canada and the
US). He gave us hope and kissed each of us on the cheek... And we
have never seen our sons. After this, every time we have seen him we
called him Judas.''
Rosario understands that what is happening to their sons is not an
isolated fact. Rosario Ibarra thinks that their situation is another
element of the unjust situation in Mexico. ``I an ashamed and sorry to
say that there are more than 12 million people in my country that
actually do not have shoes to wear, and there are millions of
indigenous people who do not speak the official language, that do not
know how to read or write. Every four minutes a child die due to
malnutrition. Many women die giving birth for the same reason. The
government is more interested in gaining one point in the stock
market that in the life of an indigenous person. They worried when
the dollar goes up or about the price of a barrel of petrol, but they
do not care about the life of a child or the situation and problems
of the indigenous people in the country.''
Despite her strong views on Mexican politics and the fact that she
has been the candidate for the Workers Revolutionary Party to the
Presidency of the Mexican Republic, Rosario finds very difficult to
commit herself to a political cause. ``If I was going to become a
member of any party, I would not be able to work for the party, as
all my time is devoted to the fight for the disappeared. I would like
to be a full time grandmother and a full time mother, but the
repression in Mexico did not allow me to be what I wanted.''
The mother's struggle has not been in vain. Out of the 500
disappeared, 148 were found alive. They were left on the streets or
the road under death-threats. ``However, they managed to see the
mothers to tell us they have seen some of our sons in the Camp number
1 in Mexico city or in another clandestine army prison. They carried
with them a message of hope. The government has never said that the
disappeared are dead, so we are not reclaiming corpses. Our war cry
has been `They took them alive, we want them alive' . For this reason
we travel all around the world asking for solidarity.''
The first reference for them was the fight of the Argentinean and
Chilean mothers and grandmothers who are still asking the government
in those countries for information about their disappeared relatives,
who were arrested during the dictatorship regimes.
The Eureka Committee has organized demonstrations, pickets and hunger
strikes - one hunger strike lasted 26 days. They travelled to the
Mexican southern state of Chiapas, to visit the Zapatista Communities
and then around the world, ``going back and forth to denounce what is
happening, trying to create a wave of solidarity with our plight''.
Rosario knows that the weakest point of the Mexican government is
especially sensitive to international opinion, so international
solidarity could be the way to recover their sons/daughters. ``They
want to keep a good image to sell the country bit by bit. The
government wanted its Treaty for Free Trade and for that reason
denied the situation in Chiapas. The then president, Salinas, knew of
the rising in Chiapas and he did not say anything because he did not
want it to interfere with the Treaty.''
On 1 January 1994, the very day the Treaty was being implemented, the
Zapatista National Liberation Army rose in Chiapas. ``Many people did
not know what was going on in Mexico, as the government have managed
to deceive other governments around the world. This finished with the
Zapatista rising, when the indigenous people decided that enough was
enough''.
Since then, the San Andres Treaty has been signed, but nothing has
changed for the indigenous people in Chiapas. ``They have lied to the
mothers these 23 years, and they are treating the problems of the
indigenous people in Chiapas in the same way. The current president,
Zedillo, went to Chiapas after the flooding saying he was carrying
food, medical supplies and tools for the people affected by the storm
and he only gave the medicines and the tools and the food to those
who voted or would promise to vote for his party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI)''.
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