Southern Mexico was the epicenter of the Dirty War, says Fritz Glockner

The unfulfilled promises of the revolution regarding agrarian distribution, the consolidation of caciques who decided the destiny of the communities, as well as the heavy hand of the government in the face of voices demanding justice, were fertile ground for the emergence of rebel groups in the second half of the last century.

The State's oppressive response to these movements gave rise to the so-called Dirty War. In addition, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 meant a breath of fresh air for leftist movements in Latin America and Mexico was no exception. Historian Fritz Glockner locates in southern Mexico the epicenter of the government's onslaught with the Dirty War, a black period in Mexico's history, which included forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, and torture of political dissidents.

A period that no one had decided to investigate, but whose facts will be reviewed and investigated for the first time with the creation of the Truth Commission, announced last week by the Undersecretary of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas. And it is precisely about the origins of the movements to which the government responded with the Dirty War that historian Fritz Glockner speaks.

"Here it is curious how the two symbolic states of revolutionary origin: Zapata in his land, Morelos, and later replicated with Rubén Jaramillo, and Chihuahua, the land of Villa, how the revolutionary agrarian movement is replicated," Fritz Glockner, historian.

These movements were born, he said, as self-defense groups and then go on the offensive.

"Here there is an option for the armed route on the part of the revolutionary clandestine groups, evidently because the legal channels, the channels of political participation, had been canceled and above all the reaction of the Mexican State to these voices in rebellion had to do with repression as such."

As a punishment for the rebels, in 1962, during the government of Adolfo López Mateos, the peasant leader and former revolutionary Rubén Jaramillo were assassinated by members of the army in Morelos, as part of the so-called Xochicalco operation. Jaramillo had taken up arms searching for a fair distribution of land for peasants and better pay for sugarcane growers, who were receiving crumbs for their crops. For twenty years he was in the government's sights until he was hunted down along with his wife and her children.

"I already mentioned Rubén Jaramillo, from 43 to 62 when his assassination was carried out in the company of his wife and his three stepchildren, and the son Epifanía was carrying in her womb", Fritz Glockner, historian.

These were part of the horrors of the Dirty War. Since 1965, after the assault on the military barracks in Madera, Chihuahua, during the six-year term of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, the persecution against opponents of the regime was relentless. But about this, the September 23rd League and other movements we will talk about later. For now, Fritz Glockner emphasizes what happened in a state that symbolizes this history: the state of Guerrero, the cradle of guerrilla movements that sought to end injustices and overthrow the state.

"Evidently Guerrero has been characterized not only in that historical moment of the sixties and seventies but also in the nineties with the actions of the EPR and the ERPI, for example, which evidently had their repercussion and ascendancy towards other states such as Oaxaca."

In Guerrero, the Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria de Género Vázquez and the party of the poor of Lucio Cabañas, both teachers of the Normal “Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa”, until today a symbol of protest and repression, arose.

"Since the end of the 1950s, Ayotzinapa has become within all rural teacher training colleges a bit of ideological reflection that does not occur in any other type of academic institution."

Rojas and Cabañas are graduates of the Normal Isidro Burgos, but they take different ideological paths, which facilitates the repressive actions of the state.

"At no time did Genaro and Lucio join forces, each one acted in different areas of the Guerrero highlands and they did not coincide to join forces as they did in the urban guerrilla", Fritz Glockner, historian.

In 1974, in the middle of the electoral campaign for the governorship of Guerrero, the party of the poor kidnapped the PRI candidate Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, who was released months later, but Lucio Cabañas' fate was sealed. On December 2, 1974, he was killed during a confrontation with the Army.

From then on, the response of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and his successor, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, was merciless, says Fritz Glockner. The Dirty War left more than 500 victims of forced disappearance in Guerrero. Some of these people were thrown into the sea from Army ships. A story that to this day is remembered among the families of Guerrero. A story awaiting justice. Like the one expected from the Truth Commission.