Posted on 06/19/2002 2:32:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
MEXICO CITY -- In a move that may dig up the skeletons of Mexico's past, President Vicente Fox declassified more than 80 million files from the nation's ultra-secret spy agency Tuesday, offering an unprecedented look at government human rights abuses committed during past decades.
Without giving details, Fox said that releasing the contents of the files could help unlock the secrets of Mexico's "dark" era, including identifying those responsible for the government's bloody crackdown on leftist guerrillas during the 1970s.
"We have to reconcile ourselves with the past," Fox said at the ceremony opening the files in Mexico's national archives, housed in what was once a clandestine holding cell for political prisoners. "In the Mexico of today, the law applies, and no one is untouchable."
The archives, which will be made available to legal authorities, academics, families of victims and journalists, are believed to hold mountains of information on the clandestine practices of the Federal Security Directorate, Mexico's now-defunct internal spy agency controlled by the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The archives cover 33 years, dating from 1952 until 1985. Ordinary citizens can access the files with a special permit.
Among other topics, the archives could shed light on the fate of hundreds of communist sympathizers who were systematically "disappeared" by covert government forces during Mexico's so-called Dirty War of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Last November, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission released a 3,000-page report blaming government paramilitary forces and death squads for abducting and torturing 532 people who vanished during the period.
The report named 74 officials believed responsible for orchestrating the acts. None of the officials has been charged with any crimes.
Sergio Aguayo, a leading human rights advocate and a harsh government critic of past abuses, heralded the opening of the files as a "watershed" event for Mexico.
"I think they are going to be a very important piece in the reconstruction of Mexican history," said Aguayo, one of only a few people allowed access to the files before their release.
Tuesday's ceremony marked Fox's latest effort to usher in an era of government openness. His electoral victory in July 2000 ended 71 years of PRI rule.
In April, lawmakers here passed Mexico's first ever freedom of information law, requiring government offices to make available all official documents to citizens. The law will go into effect next year.
One of Mexico's most closely guarded secrets has been which government official ordered soldiers to fire upon a student demonstration in Mexico City's Tlatelolco square on Oct. 2, 1968. Several hundred students are believed to have been killed in the massacre, although the government listed the casualties at just over 30.
The PRI-controlled federal government long contended that a group of armed students fired first and that soldiers strategically placed on apartment rooftops and behind bushes were simply returning fire. Witnesses that day, however, have said a group of civilian-clothed men wearing a single white glove on their left hands fired the first shots. The claims appeared to be supported by photos published last year by the weekly political magazine Proceso.
Fox last year appointed a special prosecutor to investigate unsolved government abuse cases. A movement among human rights advocates is now under way to force past officials such as former presidents Luis Echeverria, who served from 1970 until 1976, and Jose Lopez Portillo, 1976-'82, to testify about their involvement.
Interior Secretary Santiago Creel, who oversees Mexico's intelligence agency, called Tuesday's opening of the archives "a sign of the will of this government to deliver justice to those who have been waiting for it."
Creel added that past abuses "cannot happen again in our country."
But many victims' family members and rights groups have expressed doubts over justice in a country where former presidents and high officials are considered virtually untouchable. For decades, the unwritten rule for successive administrations has been to overlook past ills to avoid scrutiny of its own deeds in the future.
In his speech Tuesday, Fox seemed to suggest the release of the files represented not a verdict of guilt or innocence, but rather an avenue toward finding the truth.
"Now it's up to the specialists and authorities to make judgments based on their contents," Fox said.
When will this Marxist propaganda die? It seems the liberal American press peddles this sob story about the 1968 protests whenever the right seems to be gaining internationally. The Tucson Citizen had this as the front page banner headline a few weeks ago, with full color photos, no less. Modern Mexican administrations have failed to advance the rule of law, to be sure, but their war against the Stalinist left isn't something they should apologize for.
VRN
Imagine the shocks to society if America did the same thing.
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