Newly reported text messages shed new light on the cartel’s unsolved massacre of 43 students in Mexico, revealing that military and government officials were complicit in covering up the killings.
On September 26, 2014, students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College commandeered buses to attend a protest in Mexico City. They were driving through Iguala when they were ambushed by police and handed over to cartel members.
Paranoid leaders of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel apparently believed the buses full of young men were an invading force from a rival cartel, according to a wealth of thousands of text messages reported by police. New York Times on Saturday.
Nearly nine years later, there are still no convictions in the case, and all that has yet to be recovered and positively identified are small bone fragments from three of the students.
The investigation is riddled with flaws and courts have repeatedly dismissed charges, but now the case is gaining new momentum after authorities ordered the arrest of 20 Mexican soldiers in connection with the kidnappings, including more than a dozen in June.
Maria de los Angeles Pineda, the wife of Iguala mayor Jose Luis Abarca, was described as the “boss of bosses” behind the Guerreros Unidos cartel at the time of the massacre
Mexican Brigadier General José Rodríguez Pérez (left) and former Attorney General of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam (right) are among the suspects in the 2014 massacre
The trove of cartel text messages has apparently been critical to building the case, which has gained momentum under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in 2018 through a reform platform.
According to the Times, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intercepted the 23,000 messages in 2014 while investigating the cartel’s drug trafficking in the Chicago suburbs, but turned them over to Mexican officials only last year.
The reports indicate that the Mexican police, military and government officials are acting as subordinate quislings to the cartel.
A cartel member asked a local mayor who was on his payroll, “Do you want me to get your city councilman whore in line, or should we put him down?”
The mayor immediately replied, “I’ll bring him to you. He’s a good worker.’
In another message, a police commander says he went with a military officer and a cartel boss to arm gunmen in a nearby town.
When asked if he knew that the military officer received a “little gift” from the cartel, the police commander replied, “He’s happy.”
A city coroner in the cartel’s pocket discussed receiving cars from the group and declared his loyalty to a Chicago leader, calling him “my boss.”
“I’ll never turn my back on you,” he told the leader. “You’re like my family.”
A police officer admitted during questioning that he couldn’t resist the cartel’s regular $50 payments, which served as a retainer of sorts to keep him at the gang’s beck and call.
“You say, ‘I’m not going to take it, so I’m not getting myself into trouble,’ but then you say, ‘No, wait,'” he said, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by the Times.
A journalist walks past a mass grave excavated by forensic personnel to recover bodies at an alleged drug camp used to bury victims of the massacre
Forensic investigators search for human remains beneath a garbage-strewn hillside in the densely forested mountains on the outskirts of Cocula, Mexico, on Oct. 28, 2014
The Times report does not name any of the people who sent or received the text messages in question, and it is unclear if any of them are among those charged in the case.
In June, a federal court in Toluca in the central state of Mexico on Monday ordered the arrest of 16 soldiers in connection with the case, at least eight of whom surrendered.
Separately, General José Rodríguez Pérez, Captain José Martínez Crespo, Second Lieutenant Fabián Alejandro Pirita Ochoa and Sergeant Eduardo Mota Esquivel have been in a military prison since last September, charged with complicity in the massacre.
At the time of the students’ disappearance, Pérez was a colonel in command of the local army base in Iguala.
The most politically significant arrest took place in August 2022, when former Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam was detained.
He was charged with enforced disappearance, failing to report torture of suspects and official misconduct.
He is accused of announcing a false version of events, which he called “the historical truth.”
According to that version, Iguala officials believed the students would disrupt a local political event.
It was alleged that the police rounded up the 43 students and handed them over to a local drug ring, who killed the youths, burned their bodies in a landfill and dumped the remains in a river.
Although all the students were apparently killed, it has since been proven that they were taken in groups to different places.
Some were apparently kept alive for days – a fact revealed in the recently revealed text message that police and military officials knew about but did nothing to save the students.
Felipe Rodriguez Salgado, also known as “The Brush,” was another alleged leader of the Guerreros Unidos cartel who was arrested in 2015 in connection with the disappearance of the 43 students
Photos of missing students are seen during a march in support of the missing students of the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College in Mexico City, Mexico
Gualberto Ramírez Gutiérrez, the former anti-kidnapping director of the Specialized Deputy Attorney General for Organized Crime Investigations, is also charged in the case.
Mexican officials said earlier this month that legal proceedings have been initiated against a total of 116 people in the case Prensa Latina.
They include 32 members of the Guerreros Unidos Cartel, 49 municipal police officers, four federal and three federal ministerial police officers, as well as seven state police officers.
The founder of Guerreros Unidos, Mario Casarruvias Salgado, aka “The Handsome Toad,” died July 25, 2021 at the Military Hospital in Mexico City.
Maria de los Angeles Pineda, the wife of Iguala mayor Jose Luis Abarca, was described as the mastermind behind the Guerreros Unidos cartel at the time of the massacre.
Pineda was known as the cartel’s “Boss of Bosses,” and according to one version of events, she ordered the cartel and the corrupt local police to kidnap the student protesters to prevent them from disrupting a party she was having in town planned.
She wanted them to “teach a lesson,” prosecutors claimed after her 2014 arrest.
Her husband Abarca was also charged with the massacre, but that charge was surprisingly dropped in May.
In addition to being acquitted of kidnapping charges, Abarca was also acquitted of an organized crime charge, as prosecutors failed to prove he belonged to Guerreros Unidos.
However, a judge has sentenced Abarca to 92 years in prison for several unrelated, aggravated kidnappings that happened a year earlier, and he remains behind bars.
Felipe Rodriguez Salgado, also known as “The Brush,” was another alleged leader of the Guerreros Unidos cartel who was arrested in 2015 in connection with the disappearance of the 43 students.
Charges have also been filed against at least 14 members of the Secretariat of National Defense.
In the Iguala area where the students were kidnapped, ties between the military and the criminals date back at least to 2013.
According to an Associated Press court document, members of the military helped a local cartel with weapons and training for its hitmen.
The testimony of a captured suspect shows that Captain Jose Martínez Crespo, who was arrested in 2020, received money from a leader of the local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, to help them move guns.
“He used his vehicles so that he could move freely around the region,” the witness said.