Tracing the Dirty War's Disappeared: The Documents of Operación Diamante

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how documents generated as a result of the cooperation between the secret police and the military provide evidence of human rights violations committed during Mexico's dirty war in the sixties and seventies. The paper analyses three cases concerning militants belonging to the National Liberation Forces (FLN), detained and ‘disappeared’ during a counterinsurgency operation called Operación Diamante. The reports reveal that the military made arrests without legal authorisation, and instead of presenting prisoners to the authorities for prosecution, transferred them to clandestine military prisons. Identification cards provide a face for the ‘disappeared’. Evidence such as these secret police files have led victims' relatives to file formal legal complaints about the ‘forced disappearance’ of their loved ones.

Keywords:

• Mexico
• dirty war
• FLN
• secret police
• Operación Diamante

Acknowledgments

This article was translated by Camila Vergara.

Notes

 1. Hayner Priscilla B., Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Comissions, New York, Routledge, 2002.

 2. José Sotelo (ed.), Informe Histórico a la Sociedad Mexicana ¡Qué no vuelva a suceder!, Mexico City, Fiscalía Especial para Movimientos Sociales y Políticos del Pasado, 2006 (draft) and Campaña Nacional contra la Desaparición Forzada, ‘Informe sobre la desaparición forzada en México 2011’, http://www.comitecerezo.org/spip.php?article879, accessed 21 July 2011.

 3. Since the 1970s in the Southern Cone there has been a tradition of using oral testimonies concerning state terror, while in Mexico a culture of silence has hindered the unearthing of the truth. In the Southern Cone the declassification of secret police documents has occurred at a much slower pace.

 4. Some examples include: Alberto Ulloa, Sendero en tinieblas, Mexico City, Cal y Arena, 2004; Fernando Pineda, En las profundidades del MAR, Mexico City, Plaza y Valdés, 2003; Minerva Armendáriz, Morir de sed junto a la fuente, Mexico City, UOM, 2001; Saúl López de la Torre, Guerras secretas: Memoria de un exguerrillero de los setentas que ahora no puede caminar, Mexico City, Artefacto Editor, 2001; Gustavo Hirales, Memoria de la guerra de los justos, Mexico City, Cal y Arena, 1996.

 5. Prior to joining the FLN these activists began as student leaders of numerous social movements throughout Nuevo León, Tabasco and Yucatán. Cedillo, ‘Armed Struggle Without Revolution: The Organizing Process of the National Liberation Forces (FLN) and the Genesis of Neo-Zapatismo (1969–1983)’ in Fernando Herrera Calderón and Adela Cedillo (eds), Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico, New York, Routledge, 2012.

 6. Because the FLN embraced a prolonged war strategy, they did not engage in armed actions; the military, however, tended to mistakenly think that all ‘subversive’ organisations were working together. See Mario Acosta Chaparro, Movimiento subversivo en México, Mexico City, s.n., 1990.

 7. Rosario Ibarra, ‘Inquietud’, El Universal (Mexico City), 31 May 2005. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/editoriales/28852.html, accessed 18 July 2011.

 8. A report submitted in 1979 by the Attorney General, Oscar Flores Sánchez, stated that there were no political ‘disappearances’, and that rebels were killed in confrontations with the police or as a result of their own internal executions. Laura Castellanos, México armado, 1943–1981, Mexico City, Era, 2007, p. 315.

 9. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), which took up arms in 1994 in Chiapas, claimed the six fallen militants from Operación Diamante as the precursors of their movement. Hermann Belllinghausen, ‘Rinde Marcos homenaje público a los fundadores del Ejército Zapatista’, La Jornada (Mexico City) 19 November 2006, p. 21.

10. Tello, La rebelión de las cañadas. Origen y ascenso del EZLN, Mexico City, Cal y Arena, 2000 [2nd edition], p. 71.

11. Neil Harvey, The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy, Durham, Duke UP, 1998, pp. 9–10.

12. In 2001, the National Human Rights Commission released the ‘Special report on complaints in the matter of forced disappearances in the 1970s and early 1980s’, http://www.cndh.org.mx/node/35, accessed 18 July 2011. The report contained fragments of the DFS reports. The institution recognised that Vives, Sáenz and Pérez were ‘disappeared’, but did not send copies of its findings to the victims' families.

13. The name Diamante (Diamond) refers to the property or finca where members of the guerrilla nucleus had settled.

14. Despite the 2002 Transparency Law stipulation that in research related to human rights violations there can be no information reservations, individual files can only be consulted by relatives and their accredited representatives. There is the option to request public versions of the documents to the Federal Institute of Access to Public Information (IFAI), but these files censor personal data and are not a useful tool when it comes to uncovering the maximum amount of information on the victims.

15. United Nations, ‘International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance’: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/disappearance-convention.htm, accessed 20 July 2011. International legislation dealing with forced disappearance was created after these events, though it can be applied retroactively.

16. The initials of De la Barreda appear at the end of each document alongside the agent who typed the report: for example LBM/hsn. Currently there is no public list available with the names of DFS agents.

17. Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City, Federal Security Directorate (hereafter AGN, DFS), exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, h. 34, State of Chiapas, 20 March 1974. Translations of the documents reproduced with this article are in Tanalís Padilla and Louise E. Walker (eds), ‘English Translations of Documents from Mexico's Secret Police Archive’, working paper 2013, available online at the Dartmouth College library website and Northeastern University digital repository: http://www.dartmouth.edu/ ∼ library/digital/publishing/padilla2013/ and http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002992.

18. A previous report detailing a confrontation between the army and the Núcleo Guerrillero recorded that Vives had been wounded in the stomach, though the information cannot be corroborated by any other source. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, h. 30, State of Chiapas, 18 March 1974.

19. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, hs. 37–45 [First statement by Carlos Arturo Vives Chapa], 21 March 1974.

20. ‘Se acreditan las condiciones de un Conflicto Armado Interno en que aplica el Derecho Humanitario Internacional’ (http://www.gwu.edu/ ∼ nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB209/informe/tema09.pdf) in Sotelo, Informe Histórico, http://www.gwu.edu/ ∼ nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB180/090_cr%EDmenes%20de%20guerra.pdf accessed 22 July 2011.

21. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, h. 61, National Liberation Forces, 22 March 1974.

22. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg.14, hs. 62–77 [Second statement by Carlos Arturo Vives Chapa], 22 March 1974.

23. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, h. 79, State of Chiapas, 24 March 1974.

24. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, h. 88, State of Chiapas, 1 April 1974. The use of military cargo planes to transfer prisoners is significant since these aircraft often functioned as torture chambers in which detainees were threatened that they would be thrown into the sea. ‘Se acreditan las condiciones de un Conflicto Armado’, pp. 631–633.

25. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-14 leg,14 h. 109, National Liberation Forces, 9 April 1974.

26. Instances of torture are documented in the Special Prosecutor's report released in February 2006, ‘Official Report Released on Mexico's “Dirty War”’. The National Security Archive, 21 November 2006, http://www.gwu.edu/ ∼ nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB209/index.htm#informe, accessed 8 November 2012.

27. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, hs. 110–124 [Statement by Raúl Enrique Pérez Gasque], 9 April 1974; AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg.14, hs. 125–139 [Statement by Elisa Irina Sáenz Garza], 9 April 1974.

28. For example, Juan Carlos Chankin, 25 December 2003; Atanasio López, 25 December 2003; Anacleto Chavarría, 26 December 2003; Mateo Chankin, 7 December 2003; Jerónimo Hernández, 28 December 2003; José López, 20 March 2005; Jerónimo Ruiz Aguilar, 22 March 2005; Manuel Méndez Núñez, 23 March 2005. All interviews were conducted in the Municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.

29. AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14 h. 78 [Filiation], 23 march 1974; AGN, DFS, exp. 11-212-74, leg. 14, hs. 140–141 [Filiation], 9 April 1974.

30. ‘A reserva, 547 averiguaciones de la PGR, incluida la del 68’, Milenio (Mexico City), 25 november 2008, http://impreso.milenio.com/node/8112282, accessed 1 August 2011.

31. In the cases of forced disappearance (wrongly characterised as abductions), the judges dismissed the evidence arguing, among other things, that it could not authenticate the DFS reports because they lacked the official government seals. Centro de Derechos Humanos ‘Agustín Pro’ et al, Esclarecimiento y sanción a los delitos del pasado durante el sexenio 2000–2006: Compromisos quebrantados y justicia aplazada, México, n.e., 2006.

32. Juan Carlos Gutiérrez (ed), La sentencia de la Corte IDH: Caso Radilla Pacheco vs. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Mexico City, Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos A. C., 2010.

33. ‘Concentrado General Desaparecidos por fecha’ in Sotelo, Informe histórico, http://www.gwu.edu/ ∼ nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB180/index.htm, accessed 1 August 2011. While in 2006 a judge ordered the arrest of Echeverría on genocide charges for his role in the 1968 student massacre (when he served as Minister of the Interior), a federal magistrate granted him immunity a year later stating there was not enough evidence of Echeverría's involvement to warrant a trial.