LETTER FROM MEXICO
The planes did not go very far, 50 miles from the Pacific coast, where the depth already reached 3,000 meters. The bodies of murdered opponents were first put in bags and weighted with stones, to ensure that they would not rise to the surface. The aircraft took off from Air Base No. 7 in Pie de la Cuesta, 10 kilometers from the famous tourist resort of Acapulco, then very popular with Hollywood stars.
An investigation, carried out by military judicial authorities and finally revealed in almost its entirety, last November, showed that “death flights” therefore also existed in Mexico, to throw into the sea the corpses of people eliminated because considered subversive.
In history textbooks, unlike other Latin American countries, Mexico was not considered a military dictatorship between 1960 and 1980. Mexican officers never overthrew any president, although image of their Chilean or Brazilian counterparts, and have never had a leading role. At the time, the heads of state were all from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which led the destiny of the country between 1930 and 2001 thanks to repeated electoral fraud…
But the more positive image that Mexico enjoys compared to the rest of the continent is fading as the truth about this period becomes known. The methods used by the Mexican military hardly differed from those of their colleagues further south: torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, etc.
The infamous “white brigade”
Investigations into the “death flights”, carried out by the military prosecutor’s office, began at the end of the 1990s. They were first carried out to find out more about the careers of two generals, Francisco Quirós Hermosillo and Arturo Acosta Chaparro, suspected of protecting the leader of the Juárez cartel – the largest of the time – Amado Carrillo Fuentes. They were convicted in 2002 for drug trafficking, but never held accountable for their other crimes. In the 1970s, the two men led the infamous “white brigade”, responsible for eliminating opponents. Previously, they had been trained in anti-subversive warfare on the American military bases of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg.
By questioning witnesses from the time, military prosecutors learned of the existence of the “death flights”, of which the two generals were indeed the instigators and those responsible between 1974 and 1980. “Two decades later, we finally have access to the entire investigation, and can present these key testimonies and documents. However, the most important document is still missing: the names of those who were thrown into the sea.explains José Reveles, writer and investigative journalist who revealed this survey, in digital media Fabrica de periodismo.
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