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FIFTY YEARS OF SILENCE: MEXICO FACES THE LEGACY OF ITS DIRTY WAR  
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Kate Doyle and Claire Dorfman
December 20, 2024
National Security Archive
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_ Mexico's first National Truth Commission has released monumental
reports on state violence during the 'dirty wars' 50 years ago.
Declassified documents reveal that the U.S. prioritized the stability
of the Mexican regime over human rights concerns. _

Image courtesy Jorge León / Archivo Histórico del PRD, reproduced
in Fue el Estado (1965-1990)

 

WASHINGTON, D.C., DECEMBER 20, 2024—Half a century ago, Mexico was
convulsed by state violence and social upheaval. The year 1974
witnessed some of the most emblematic human rights abuses to occur
during the country’s long-running Dirty War: the forced
disappearance of community activist Rosendo Radilla Pacheco, the
killing of revolutionary guerrilla leader Lucio Cabañas, and the
Mexican military’s use of “death flights” to eliminate suspected
subversives by throwing their bodies from planes into the Pacific
Ocean. These and thousands of other grave human rights violations were
documented in two monumental and comprehensive reports released this
year by Mexico’s first major truth commission.

Today, the National Security Archive is publishing a selection of
declassified U.S. documents about the Dirty War, along with translated
excerpts from the two reports in order to give English-readers a sense
of the scope and methodologies encompassed in the truth commission’s
investigations. Taken together, the materials offer a clearer picture
than has ever been available of the “systematic and widespread”
human rights abuses committed by Mexican intelligence, military,
police, and parastate forces that targeted “broad sectors of the
population” between 1965 and 1990.[1]
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Mexico’s government did not launch this massive transitional justice
project on its own initiative. The impulse for national reckoning came
from survivors and collectives of family members and activists. It was
their decades-long persistence in defying the state’s permanent
silence and demanding answers that finally led then-president Andrés
Manuel López Obrador to agree to create the Commission. On October 6,
2021, the president published his decree
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the _Commission for Access to Truth, Historical Clarification and the
Promotion of Justice for Grave Human Rights Violations committed
between 1965 and 1990_ (CoVEH, in Spanish), which in turn launched
five working groups to grapple with different dimensions of the
project. While the Mechanism for Truth and Historical Clarification
was responsible for investigating abuses and producing the truth
commission’s report, other groups examined the promotion of justice,
the search for the disappeared, reparations, and the promotion of
memory and non-repetition.[2]
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In many countries in Latin America, the end of the Cold War spurred a
profound reflection about the state’s role in political violence,
and how it was rationalized by anti-communist national security and
counterinsurgency concerns. By contrast, Mexican efforts were anemic,
few, and far between. The earliest official initiative to investigate
forced disappearance during the Dirty War was carried out by the
National Human Rights Commission in 2001, decades after the fact.[3]
[[link removed]] Successive
governments refused calls for a truth commission, paradigmatic cases
such as the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre remained chronically
unresolved, and a special prosecutor assigned to investigate
historical human rights crimes closed his office after five
years without holding anyone accountable for anything
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In this instance, the scale of the truth commission’s efforts was
unprecedented, and the CoVEH completed its mandate with a whirlwind of
milestones, conclusions, and recommendations for the future. In
its Executive Summary of the Reports of the Five Instruments of the
CoVEH
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Commission points out some of the achievements of the enormous
project. The working group on the Promotion of Justice led Mexico’s
Attorney General to create a new “Special Investigations and
Litigation Team” to consider prosecuting dozens of criminal human
rights cases from the Dirty War era. On the Search for the
Disappeared, the group launched a massive database called _Sistema
Angelus_ to organize and make accessible thousands of government
records, and prepared plans to exhume cemeteries and potential
clandestine burial sites on military installations. The Reparations
working group contributed to a registry of more than 2,500 victims of
the Dirty War who may be eligible for future compensation. And the
Memory and Non-repetition group organized public forums about the
Dirty War, issued publications, and helped create a memory center at
the Circular de Morelia in Mexico City, a former _Dirección Federal
de Seguridad_ (Federal Security Directorate, DFS) building where
detainees were tortured.[4]
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The work of the Mechanism for Truth and Historical Clarification –
while also extraordinary, was complicated by internal differences
among the five commissioners. A central friction had to do with how
the Mechanism identified the scope of repression – whether political
violence was limited to armed revolutionary groups and militant
activists, or whether the Dirty War included abuses committed against
more diverse sectors, such as journalists, indigenous leaders, and
LGBTQ activists.

After the Mechanism was established in 2021, one commissioner resigned
(historian Aleida García Aguirre). Three commissioners – Abel
Barrera, David Fernández, and Carlos Pérez Ricart – chose to
define the universe of Dirty War victims much more broadly than
historically recognized. That left a single commissioner, Eugenia
Allier, to assemble a team focused on traditional categories of
victims: guerrillas, student activists, dissident labor and union
organizers, and human rights defenders. As a result of these
differences, the reports that resulted from the two separate
investigations pursued the same objective – the historical
clarification of the Dirty War – but landed on very distinct
conclusions.

Allier’s emphasis on the Mexican State’s intent to destroy armed
revolutionary groups such as Lucio Cabañas’ Party of the Poor in
Guerrero focused on the essential _political_ nature of the Dirty
War; its anti-communist, counterinsurgent objectives and its
determination to “suffocate and eliminate any form of political
dissidence and popular protest.”[5]
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team’s report, Undeniable Truths: For a Mexico Without Impunity
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reveals a multiplicity of plans coordinated between the Army, police
forces, and intelligence agencies that was designed to hunt down and
detain or kill suspected subversives around the country, including,
for example, the “_Rosa de los Vientos_” plan, which targeted
members of the radical 23 September Communist League during the late
1970s. The report contains new details about the location of
clandestine detention centers, the widespread use of torture, and the
forced disappearance of victims. It lists 1,103 missing or disappeared
persons, and names more than 2,000 public officials “involved in the
repressive system,” including 200 DFS members. It analyzes the
military’s use of “death flights” in Guerrero state, based on
testimonies and archival documents. It identifies previously unknown
military units involved in repression, the systematic use of sexual
violence during counterinsurgency operations, the State’s reliance
on hired thugs to injure and kill student protesters, and its
permanent surveillance and repression of dissident labor activists and
human rights defenders.

The other team’s report, It was the State (1965-1990)
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targets of the state’s counterinsurgency campaigns were not limited
to guerrillas or student and labor activists, but included a sprawling
range of social actors and sometimes entire communities. The
commissioners behind this analysis – Barrera, Fernández and Pérez
Ricart – concluded that repression and political violence
perpetrated by state security agencies aimed to crush social
mobilization among “at least eleven groups of victims who until now
remained invisible.”[6]
[[link removed]] Altogether,
the team identified more than 8,500 victims of repression. This “new
narrative,” as the report calls it, describes a uniquely intolerant
State, which used espionage, harassment, imprisonment, torture, rape,
forced disappearance, and execution against a wide array of
marginalized groups, including refugee and indigenous communities,
Afro-Mexicans, and religious dissidents. This conclusion is an
innovation in the historiography of political violence in Mexico, and
one that may help to explain the ferocity of the ongoing violence and
inequality that Mexico continues to experience. At the same time, the
decision to widen the lens to encompass sprawling categories of
victims dilutes the specificity of the State’s political
counterinsurgency objectives during the Dirty War: when the security
apparatus of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) set out to
annihilate revolution.

The perspective expressed in _It was the State (1965-1990)_ was not
entirely welcomed by historians of the Dirty War era or by human
rights organizations. The Commission’s executive body itself, the
CoVEH, criticized the decision of the three commissioners, writing
that their report:

[. . .] exceeded the objectives of the Commission. The report
investigated human rights violations that were not necessarily related
to State violence within the context of counterinsurgency, as well as
episodes of violence that took place after 1990, even spanning
circumstances from recent years. [. . .] The concern that led the
[Mechanism’s] commissioners to delve into these subjects in their
report is understandable, but the mandate of the Commission is clear,
as were the demands of the victims’ families, survivors, and
collectives with respect to knowing the truth and achieving justice
for the atrocities committed through State violence in 1965 to 1990.
Important sections of the [Mechanism’s] final report did not address
these historic demands.[7]
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That said, the two separate reports do have much in common; both
excoriate the Mexican State’s silence and persistent impunity around
Dirty War human rights crimes. As _It was the State (1965-1990)_ put
it, “The problem is that these violations have been denied or
justified by the perpetrators and by the State that has sheltered
them. The point is not so much a lack of knowledge as a refusal by
those involved to acknowledge the existence of these atrocities, their
unjustifiable nature, and their own role in them. This is a political
question.”[8]
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both reports agreed that it was the victims themselves and their
families who brought about Mexico’s first real transitional justice
effort. _Undeniable Truths_ contains an entire section devoted to
highlighting “the importance of the struggle for memory, truth and
justice that has been sustained for decades by relatives, survivors,
groups, and companions of survivors of this period of violence.
Throughout these years of struggle, they have not only encountered the
State’s response of denial, silencing, impunity for those
responsible, and inaction in the face of their demands, but also
persecution, surveillance, harassment, repression, continuous insult
and revictimization. In this sense, this Report recognizes them as the
principal guardians of memory, who with their struggle and resistance
have sustained their demand for justice and prevented the erasure of
the crimes committed by the Mexican State during this period.”[9]
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Both reports also address the vital role that archives played in
shaping their understanding of the Dirty War. As part of the
government’s mandate for the Commission, investigators were supposed
to have full and unfettered access to state records from the era, and
certain agencies complied without a problem.[10]
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the issue quickly became a source of conflict
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the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) and the Center for
National Intelligence (CNI) refused to turn over relevant files. The
Mechanism denounced this publicly and eventually released six
separate “technical reports”
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the missing documentation and the nature of the government’s
secrecy. The Mechanism’s objections led to growing anger on the part
of President López Obrador, who slammed the investigators as liars
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declaring that Sedena had turned over all records and that the
government was committed to “clarify everything, to
hide _absolutely nothing_, to make everything transparent….”

The government’s hostility towards the Commission was even more
evident when the _Washington Post _revealed
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historian and CoVEH coordinator, Camilo Vicente Ovalle, had been
targeted by the Israeli spyware Pegasus since at least December 2022.
Pegasus contracts were controlled by the Mexican Armed Forces, which
meant that the same Army denying access to critical files for
Mexico’s first national truth commission was secretly spying on the
man leading the investigations. Alejandro Encinas, former
undersecretary for human rights and president of the CoVEH, was also
targeted by Pegasus.
[[link removed]] When
the Commission concluded its work in September of this year, outgoing
President López Obrador held no public reception or unifying
presentation, but left the Mechanism for Truth and Historical
Clarification to deliver its two reports to the public on its own.

Despite López Obrador’s abandonment of the truth commission, the
CoVEH remains an unprecedented achievement for transitional justice in
Mexico. The reports the Mechanism produced – more than 5,000 pages
together – reveal a trove of new information about how State
agencies planned, implemented, and covered up the atrocities of the
Dirty War. They build on decades of work from family members, human
rights advocates, and scholars, and will be central to future studies
about the era for years to come. The Mechanism’s investigations help
explain how the legacy of past impunity has grown into the monstrous
injustice that Mexico lives with today. They take accountability
seriously and acknowledge the power that memory, truth-telling, and
transparency have to vindicate the lives lost and damaged by the
State’s cruelty.

The National Security Archive will continue to mine these two massive
reports for future postings and commentary about the Dirty War.

The National Security Archive’s Mexico Project curated a special
collection of 240 declassified U.S. documents and provided expert
analysis to support the Mechanism’s investigations. While we
continue to push for further declassification, records related to key
events in the history of the Dirty War reveal a wide variability in
the quality of U.S. government reporting on Mexico.

Some documents contain detailed and critical analysis from political
officers at the U.S. Embassy. For example, a confidential cable from
1965 assessed a surprise attack by a band of guerrillas from the
Ejército Popular Revolucionario Mexicano (EPRM) on the Mexican Army
garrison in Ciudad Madera, Chihuahua. The Embassy determined the
violence would likely worsen as the government had given “no
evidence to date” that it was addressing the legitimate concerns of
small farmers in the area. (Document 1)

Other records exhibit a remarkable degree of trust in the Mexican
security forces to maintain order, even after significant episodes of
state violence such as the Tlatelolco and Corpus Christi student
massacres. The National Security Archive has posted extensively
on Tlatelolco
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Christi [[link removed]] and published
hundreds of declassified government documents related to the violence
against student protestors.

Documents from U.S. consulates provided invaluable granular reporting
for the truth commission’s investigations. A confidential cable from
the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey reported on the visit of three top
Nuevo León security officials in 1967 to the AID International Police
Academy in the United States. This document was reproduced in the_ IT
WAS THE STATE (1965-1990) _report as evidence of U.S. assistance for
the “professionalization” of state security forces in
counterinsurgency tactics. (Document 4)[11]
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The United States closely followed Mexico’s growing armed guerrilla
movement, as they considered the country a frontline in the Cold War
and the hemispheric battle against communism. While U.S. officials
maintained a watchful eye over the activities of groups like the Party
of the Poor in Guerrero, a top secret National Intelligence Daily
article from the CIA concluded in 1974 that the insurgency was a
“nuisance” and not a substantial threat to the stability of the
Mexican regime, despite the “massive application of military
manpower” deployed to combat the guerrillas. (Document 7)[12]
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The U.S. also monitored developments within the military, including
key personnel changes and appointments. A secret Intelligence
Information cable from the CIA established that General Francisco
Quirós Hermosillo, who moved to third in command of Mexico's
Secretariat of National Defense in 1980, was the former head of the
Brigada Blanca, the “extra legal anti-terrorist organization,”.
The Brigada Blanca was a brutal intelligence and operational unit
responsible for forced disappearances, torture, and assassinations of
suspected subversives. Quirós Hermosillo has been named
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intellectual author in the military’s “death flights” in
Guerrero. (Document 13)

The records published today provide a sense of the concerns and
priorities of U.S. foreign policy during Mexico’s Dirty War. The
documents make clear the United States government valued the Mexican
regime’s stability over all else, and U.S. reporting justified human
rights violations as a necessary evil to contain the threat of
communism.

READ THE DOCUMENTS
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Notes

[1]
[[link removed]] Mechanism
for Truth and Historical Clarification, _It was the State
(1965-1990), vol. 1_
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12.

[2]
[[link removed]] Commission
for Access to Truth, Historical Clarification and the Promotion of
Justice for Grave Human Rights Violations committed between 1965 and
1990 (CoVEH), _Executive Summary_
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the Reports of the Five Instruments of the CoVEH, _pp. 9.

[3]
[[link removed]] Comisión
Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Recomendación 26/2001
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27 November 2001.

[4]
[[link removed]] CoVEH, _Executive
Summary of the Reports of the Five Instruments of the CoVEH,_ pp.
15-19.

[5]
[[link removed]] CoVEH, _Executive
Summary of the Reports of the Five Instruments of the CoVEH,_ pp. 41.

[6]
[[link removed]] The
violence was directed, according to the report, “against peasant,
indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities, against those who were active
in urban-popular movements, against communities violated by the
imposition of development policies, against political-partisan
dissidents, against people from the gender-diverse community, against
journalists, against refugees on the southern border of Mexico,
against residents of areas where the fight against drug trafficking
was carried out, against people marginalized and criminalized due to
their vulnerable conditions, against people who were part of some
religious dissidence, and even serious violations committed against
members of the armed forces and police at the hands of their own
commanders.” See _It was the State (1965-1990), vol. 1,_ pp. 14.

[7]
[[link removed]] CoVEH, _Executive
Summary of the Reports of the Five Instruments of the CoVEH,_ pp.
12-13.

[8]
[[link removed]] Mechanism
for Truth and Historical Clarification, _It was the State
(1965-1990), vol. 1,_ pp. 27.

[9]
[[link removed]] Mechanism
for Truth and Historical Clarification, _Undeniable Truths: For a
Mexico Without Impunity, vol. 1, Executive Summary, _pp. XXXI.

[10]
[[link removed]] The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs was one such agency. See, for
example, _It was the State (1965-1990), vol. 1, _pp. 193.

[11]
[[link removed]] Mechanism
for Truth and Historical Clarification, _It was the State
(1965-1990), vol. 4, _pp. 415.

[12]
[[link removed]] Editors’
note: the Mexico Project conducted a thorough review of U.S. documents
in our collection that have since been further declassified. This
document was partially released to us in 2000 through FOIA and has now
been declassified in full by the CIA. Key details that were previously
redacted were thus able to be turned over to the Mechanism’s
investigators.

* Mexico
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* state violence
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* The Dirty War
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* National Security Archives
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