New details about a 2014 incident in Iguala Mexico where 43 college students were ambushed by police, handed over to a cartel and never heard from again show that the governmental officials who allegedly helped cover up the kidnapping and subsequent deaths of the students may have been taking orders from the Guerreros Unidos cartel.
Nine years have passed since that fateful day; we have yet to see any convictions.
According to The New York Times, the outlet received around 23,000 text messages, witness testimony, and investigative files that show the government in southern Mexico was working with criminal organizations to control the area, and that the military monitored the abduction of the students, but failed to stop it.
The text messages obtained by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) wiretaps on the cartel at the time, which were described as the biggest breakthrough in the case, showed traffickers calling members of the military "whores" who they had "in the bag."
The report shows that the cartel was getting increasingly worried about its rivals moving into its territory, so when there was a bus similar to the ones used to smuggle drugs with a large number of men on it, the cartel feared it was its enemy making a move on its territory.
The messages show that just after the student's bus departed on September 26, 2014, for Mexico City, police shot at them, abducted them, and turned them over to the cartel who later killed them and disposed of their bodies. Military documents show that the organization knew about the cartel's plan, but did nothing to intervene.
The mother of one of the students Cristina Bautista said, "They had all this information but they hid it." She added, "Instead of looking for our children or telling us the truth they protected themselves."
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in July that one "cannot stain an entire institution because of the actions of one official,” according to The Times.
The US DEA collected the conversations in 2014 while investigating the cartel's involvement in trafficking drugs into Chicago. An investigator said it delayed handing over the information until last year because of distrust in the Mexican government.
One prosecutor who went up against the military and fled to the United States for fear of his safety, Gómez Trejo, said the evidence of collusion "is very robust, strong and unquestionable." He added, "It corroborates how the cartel operates and the connections it had to the authorities, including the army.”
After being given access to the wiretaps, he said, "We kept looking at each other" in amazement. He added, "You marvel at the fact you're seeing a revelation." In one of the messages, one of the members raised a warning that members of their enemy were interspersed with the group of students, which led to the kidnapping and killing of the students.
Other revelations found in the messages included how the organization spoke in code. In one text between a cartel member and the mayor, a reference was made about making sure a "whore of a city councilor" gets in line. Others showed communication between police and cartel members.
