Dirty War (Mexico)

Dirty War
Part of the Cold War
Mexican Army soldiers in the streets during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.
Date 1954 – 2000 (46 years) Location Mexico Result Implementation of neoliberal policies. Several acts of violence have not yet been clarified. Political defeat of the PRI in the 2000 presidential elections before the National Action Party (PAN). Grouping of the political left and formation of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Belligerents
Left-wing groups Party of the Poor Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre EZLN EPR Various social and armed movements in the country	Mexico Institutional Revolutionary Party United States (support)
Casualties and losses
At least ~1,200

The Dirty War (Spanish language: Guerra Sucia ) refers to the Mexican theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict between the Mexican PRI-ruled government, backed by the US, and left-wing student and guerrilla groups in the 1960s and 1970s under the presidencies of Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo. During the war, government forces carried out disappearances, estimated at 1,200, systematic torture, and "probable extrajudicial executions".

The judicial investigation into State crimes against political movements was opened only until Vicente Fox's term (2000-2006), which created the Special Prosecutor's Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past (FEMOSPP). However, despite the fact that it has advanced in the knowledge of the historical facts, the FEMOSPP has not been able to arrive at finalize concrete legal responsibilities against which they have been indicated like main people in charge of the dirty war.

Events

The war was characterized by a backlash against the active student movement of the late 1960s which terminated in the Tlatelolco massacre at a 1968 student rally in Mexico City, in which 30 to 300 (official report, non-governmental sources claim thousands) students were killed, and by the Corpus Christi massacre, a massacre of student demonstrators in Mexico City on June 10, 1971.

There were several barely connected groups fighting against the government during this period. Among the most important, the September 23 Communist League was at the forefront of the conflict, active in several cities throughout Mexico, drawing heavily from Christian Socialist and Marxist student organizations. They carried out confrontations with Mexican security forces, several kidnappings, and attempted to kidnap Margarita López Portillo, the sister of the president. In Guerrero, the Party of the Poor, ostensibly fighting against landholder impunity and oppressive police practices in rural areas, was led by the ex-teacher Lucio Cabañas; they carried out ambushes of the army and security forces and the abduction of Guerrero's governor-elect.

The legalization of left-wing political parties in 1978 along with the amnesty of imprisoned and at large guerrillas caused a number of combatants to end militant struggle against the government. However, certain groups continued fighting, and the National Human Rights Commission states the hostilities continued into 1982.

In June 2002, a report prepared for Vicente Fox, the first president not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 70 years, detailed the government's actions from 1964 to 1982. The report states, according to BBC News, that the Mexican army "kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of rebel suspects" in the period and accused the Mexican state of genocide. The Mexican Special Prosecutor claimed the report was overly biased against the military, and failed to detail crimes committed by rebels, which included kidnappings, bank robberies, and assassinations. However, there is a general consensus in the public opinion, that sees the government's actions as blameworthy in this types of conflicts, for instead of ensuring the security of innocent civilians, victimizing them and killing them alike.

Rise of the Guerrilla Groups

The year 1960 marked the beginning of a decade of terror in the region of Guerrero as the state slowly began to deal with the citizens and peasants there in ever increasingly violent ways. The state enacted these acts of suppression on Guerrero to keep the numerous different political reform movements stifled, as the local people over time grew agitated with the way the government was wielding their power and meddling with their rights. As the citizens grew more determined to speak out against the government in the 1960s, the PRI continued to increase their terror tactics in the region. While this was done to keep the populace under their control, this constant stream of violence pushed many guerrillas to consider raising up arms against the PRI. The rising up of guerrilla groups in the 1960s and 1970s provided the state an excuse to focus their resources on suppressing the armed activities of the guerrillas. The army would become infamous for their tactics in repressing the rebels in the rural areas of Mexico, where such practices such as the death flights were initiated. This period of state violence in the state of Guerrero helped to bring about numerous guerrilla organizations. One of these groups was the Party of the Poor (PDLP), which was influenced by Marxism and people like Che Guevara. This group tended to be focused more on the rural regions like Guerrero, where they would be more likely to find support among the peasants there. PDLP actions become more violent towards the rich after events such as the 1967 Atoyac massacre, where leaders like Lucio Cabanas tried to use the peasants anger to bring about true revolution. As the 1960s and 1970s would go on, the PDLP would gain attention around the nation for acts like their kidnapping of Ruben Figueroa who was a prominent member of the PRI. While this act inspired those downtrodden by the government, this also marked the decline of the organization as the government began to focus more on taking out this guerrilla group. Eventually the army found and killed Cabanas on December 2, 1974 in an attempt to cause his movement to fall apart. Another school teacher turned revolutionary, Genaro Vazquez, founded the National Revolutionary Civic Association (ACNR) as a response to the governments actions in Guerrero. These two leaders and their movements emerged as the armed phase of this social struggle against a corrupt government, which would continue long after the deaths of the leaders.

Women's Role in the Guerrilla Movements

Despite the fact that there were over 30 guerrilla groups that had formed between the mid 1960s and 1970s to resist the authoritarian government, there is much information that is simply not known about the organizations. Considering how most of these organizations were secretive about their activities and under threat by the government of the time, the lack of information on this aspect of the Dirty War is understandable. This makes the issue of determining women's role in these guerrilla groups more challenging for without that data, researchers of the period have to rely on any available sources that are present. Generally, women who joined these groups tended to be from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds and young students and professionals who usually part of the student movements that had risen up during this period. Some of the women in the groups would even receive some form of military training to help the group they were a part of in their struggles. While this would not typically be direct conflict with government forces, the women did help in attacks on a number of businesses, where the guerrillas would 'expropriate' them to gather supplies to keep the groups operating. Women would also have positions of leadership in some of the groups as the 1970s came to a close.

Women's active participation in these guerrilla groups also subjected them to torture and abuse by the governmental forces, which is a common tactic employed by secret police forces in authoritarian regimes. Politically active women in Mexico were especially terrorized by the state, for women of the time were generally painted as a wife or a mother that focused on home life and not political dealings.

Torture

Torture was one of the many tools used by the PRI-run state in its drive to keep the numerous guerrilla groups and political dissidents repressed. While torture is illegal in many countries during this time, the numerous authoritarian regimes that sprung up from the Cold War used it to great effect. The Mexican state used torture to get information from captured rebels and guerrillas about attacks and plans. This torturing would be down at any number of clandestine detention centers, where guerrillas would be sent to before arriving at a legal prison so as the state's activities would be kept secret from outside sources. Typically both male and female guerrilla prisoners would be tortured at these areas, it was more common for women to be sexually assaulted by their guards. This, combined with other forms of physical and psychological gender-based transgressions leads some to believe that the state employed this form of gender policing to try and deter women from breaking the regimes social and political norms. The detaining and torturing of political prisoners became more systematic after the student uprisings in 1968, for the government decided that heavy-handed responses were necessary to deal with the unrest. This stage of violent and public repression of differing ideals was similar to the regimes of the Southern Cone governments, such as Argentina.

Aftermath of the Dirty War

While Mexico's Dirty War has been over for several years, not much is known of the extent of the number of victims the war claimed, due to its elusive nature throughout its length. Part of the reason for this problem is that since there was no large scale truth commission to bring justice to the perpetrators and closure for the victim's families, Mexico never had its "Pinochet moment" in regards to the war. Another problem was the lack of response in the wake of the 2006 report by Carillo Prieto, which documented some of the atrocities inflicted by the PRI regime. Despite this evidence of numerous crimes that violated human rights, ex-president Echeverria and several other PRI officials had their cases dismissed and became free men. This failure by the government to address these problems of the past has been a cause of tension at times in Mexico, as citizens become untrusting of a state that does not address the old regime and its reign of terror.  

See Also                                         

• Central American crisis
• Operation Condor
• Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro
• Rosario Ybarra
• Miguel Nazar Haro
• List of wars involving Mexico