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Sunday, September 27, 2015

It's #49 not #43; The forgotten victims of the Iguala Massacre

Lucio R Borderland Beat With Chivis

#49 
It was a horrific series of events on September 26 and 27 of 2014, that the world came to know the Ayotzinapa Normalistas, those students in rural colleges becoming teachers.  The label #43 was quickly attached to the 43 students who remain unaccounted for, but there were 49 (some accounts say 50) who were also a part of the mayhem in Iguala Guerrero.  They have become the forgotten ones. The press are not publishing their stories, and highlighting the grief of their families, who in some aspects, at a greater degree,  are hounded by revulsion of terror of the night from hell.

There were 3 other normalistas killed that night, and three others, a bus driver, a lady in a taxi, and a 15 year old soccer player shot and killed as his team bus came under attack.

Of all the victims, of what is known, no one suffered more in the minutes before his death than Julio Mondragon. 

He was beaten so badly his skull sustained multiple fractures, his internal bleeding included his brain, and his face was flayed. 

The Los Angeles, California native, born and raised in L.A., decided to return to his mother’s homeland.  He quickly fell in love, married, became a father and set his sights on helping his indigenous community by becoming a teacher.

I found this article while searching the internet for a story that is different, hats off to “El Daily Post” for this post.


On the first anniversary of the Iguala massacre paying respects and acknowledgement to :

#44 Julio Mondragon, #45 Daniel Solís, #46 Julio César Ramírez, (normalistas killed on September 26th) #47 Victor Manuel Lugo Ortiz bus driver, #48 Blanca Montiel, and soccer player #49 David José García Evangelista.    (Lucio)                  

 Below is the article.by Maria Verza of AP.

Screen shot of Julio's face book page


SAN MIGUEL TECOMATLÁN, State of Mexico — Unlike the families of the 43 students who disappeared a year ago, Julio César Mondragón's loved ones were left with a body to bury. But there is little comfort in that, because Mondragón's corpse bore witness to the horror of his final moments.
His autopsy showed several skull fractures, internal bleeding and other injuries consistent with torture. His face had been flayed, a tactic often used by the drug cartels to incite terror. Photos of his bloody skull were uploaded to the Internet.
Funeral of Julio Cesar Ramirez Nava
International attention has been focused on the 43 students who vanished a year ago Saturday, but there were 49 victims that night. Six others died at the hands of police in those hours, including Mondragón, a 22-year-old father.

According to an independent group of experts, the disappearances and the killings were the result of a long, coordinated attack against students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa who had come to the southern city of Iguala to commandeer buses for a protest.

But the events of last Sept. 26 were far from isolated. Some 25,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico since 2007, and hundreds from the Iguala area in the last year alone. The disappearance of the students has drawn attention to others who have been lost, as well as brutal drug cartels, official corruption, government indifference and languishing legal cases.

According to Mexico's former attorney general, the 43 disappeared in an attack by police and the Guerreros Unidos drug gang because they were mistaken for rival gang members. The attorney general said last November they were killed and burned to ash in a giant pyre in the nearby Cocula garbage dump.

David Jose Garcia 15 
The independent experts assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took apart that version earlier this month, saying authorities knew who the students were from the minute they headed for Iguala, and at the very least did nothing to stop the attacks.

They say the funeral pyre simply didn't happen, and suggest the attack occurred because students unknowingly hijacked a bus carrying illegal drugs or money. Iguala is known as a transit hub for heroin going to the United States.

Families say the judicial neglect extends to Mondragón and five others killed that night. His fellow students Daniel Solís and Julio César Ramírez, were shot dead at close range. Driver Victor Manuel Lugo Ortiz and David José García Evangelista, 15, died when police fired at a soccer team bus. Blanca Montiel, 40, was killed by stray gunfire while riding in a taxi.

Mondragón had been on one of the buses when it was attacked, then later showed up at a press conference the students called at 12:30 a.m. amid the mayhem. He fled when police opened fire. Witnesses said shortly after they last saw him, they heard screams from someone they assumed had been detained by police. About 6 a.m., soldiers found his body less than a mile from where he disappeared.

Though Mondragón's autopsy points to torture, that doesn't appear in the court records. A report by a military unit at the scene said his face had been peeled off with a knife. But the autopsy says it could have been done by an animal after the body was dumped. His family calls that conclusion "a mockery."
Daniel Solis with family at his graduation

Mondragón's case could provide clues to who was behind the attack, according to the commission. But it languishes in three separate court files. The commission and Mondragón's family want the body exhumed for a new autopsy.

The former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife are among 28 people charged with his killing. Authorities say they were the ones who ordered the attacks.

But Sayuri Herrera, lawyer for the Mondragón family, said it would be easy for any defense attorney to get the charges thrown out because the shabby investigative work and foggy charges filed by prosecutors could weaken the case. Charges have already been dropped against one police officer, who remains jailed for the missing 43.

"There's not even clarity in the accusations," said Herrera.

Mondragón's family gathers most Saturdays at the large table in his uncle Cuitláhuac's modest
Lenin Mondragon 
concrete home, sometimes to meet with Herrera, sometimes for psychological counseling, always to plot a path to justice.

"Here we all pretend to be strong," said Lenin Mondragón, 22, who has his brother's eyes, now filled with sadness.

They want the case taken up by federal prosecutors. The Inter-American Commission's experts also say the six murders should be part of the federal case of the 43 because they complete the picture of what happened that night.

The attorney general's office has refused that approach. It also declined for weeks to answer questions about the case from The Associated Press, although on Friday, Eber Betanzos, assistant attorney general for human rights, said the office was about to decide whether it would take over the investigation from state prosecutors. He also said his office will be present for Mondragon's exhumation.

The case remains with state prosecutors in Guerrero, where a lack of resources and expertise make it even less likely that justice will be served.

Mondragón was a little older than his other first-year classmates because he had passed through several normal schools before enrolling in Ayotzinapa. He liked to challenge the teachers, Cuitláhuac Mondragón said. He also taught reading and writing to poor families in San Miguel Tecomatlán, a rural town in the hills of the State of Mexico.

Julio's mother, (left) Afrodita Mondragón, likes to look at his Facebook profile, though in wading through the Internet she is careful not to land on the photos of a skull when she searches his name.

"The only thing we ask for is the truth," his uncle said. "The government is betting that this will all be forgotten, and we're betting on justice."

18 comments:

  1. Time and space: the government wants time and space because as the case becomes stale people/witnesses die, forget, move on, and become disinterested. These are the reasons why the government drags its feet in the investigation. There is much to lose if the truth comes out: control of the people. There is meaning to the phrase, justice delayed is justice denied. Mexico knows no justice, unless you can pay for it, and that means, paying to avoid justice.

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  2. Are you some people still calling "Chapo for president !" ?

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  3. These poor souls were martyred so that the international press could expose the stories in Guerrero hence leading to the demise of GU and others. RIP COMPAS

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    1. Where disappeared so the government can always ask "what victims?" Until the cows come home, it has all happened before, but many victims were left behind, and mexican government and army are terrified of being found out before they die, that is why expert in disappearances and kidnappings salvador cienfuegos was chosen to be secretary of defense, in spite of his old age, he will never face a jury, because the poor guy is too old, and peña nieto will blame it all on him...all done by the book...

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  4. I hope and Pray they get justice this and all the other murders that night i pray they all get justice if not by the courts then by the streets those animals already crossed the line by murdering them but to cross it more by the torture i hope they burn in hell

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  5. Thank you Lucio, for posting this! Hopefully they never become the 'forgotten six' from this travesty.

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  6. GU are just the fall guys, the method of disappearance and the many varied attempts at covering all of this up point fingers to EL GOBIERNO FEDERAL...
    because #fue el gobierno...
    --The nazis and their apologizes deny the Holocaust even today, 70 years after it happened...
    --the mexican government still denies it's crimes 47 years after mexico68 and 43 after the haconazo of 1972...
    --Acteal/Chenalhó is still denied after about 20 years of impunity, cover up and protection by the US government that has even found the "legal mechanisms of granting sovereign impunity" to its helpful idiots like ernesto zedillo while in mexico epn reivindicates emilio chuayffet chemor who resigned over Acteal and still denies his guilt saying he has "medals from other countries" to prove his innocence, like genaro Garcia luna and fecal calderon, hell even pinochet had medals and cordon blue condecorations from france, spain and england and Germany to prove he was a good boy...
    --the pinochetistas deny their many crimes against humanity 42 years after the fact...in spite of having like 500 prosecutions and many confessions, having found dismembered corpses and fragmented bones from corpses that were further destroyed by grenades before covering up in their clandestine fosas...
    Google:
    La Caravana de la Muerte, comandada por el general Sergio Victor Arellano Stark...
    --youtube: Gral. Joaquin Lagos acusa a pinochet- Caravana de la Muerte...
    --El general Lagos Commander in charge of the Antofagasta military zone returned the corpses of Arellano's victims to their families, they had been machine gunned carefully, on the knees, arms, genital areas, jaws broken, knifed, clearly trying to keep them alive for as long as possible, not just "summarily executed for whatever reason"
    --general Lagos delivered his paperwork in 2000...
    --today the crimes of pinochet receive no coverage still demand proof, the US still protects them while protesting it's innocence...
    --The CIA the US Navy, ITT, kissinger, nixxon, Milton friedman and his chicago boys school of economics, the chilean extreme right and the moderate christian/democratas that provoked the failures of the allende presidency still are innocent, and we have new bones all the time like the Ayotzinapos...but very small bones...new scapegoats, new false leads, and an innocent federal government victim of the people's ignorant attacks...

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  7. It's an AP story. I'm posting everywhere I can:

    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7410baf79a3b4269a9152d3ad6a79379/search-mexicos-43-1-brutal-killing-goes-ignored

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  8. I read an article with the mother of Julio Cesar Ramirez, she said the others killed that night are not given attention as if their deaths did not matter much.

    she said authorities will not meet with them unless they are with the 43 group.

    sad

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    1. The disappearance of 43 guys is more macabre, while nobody denies the other victims from Ayotzinapa or from years prior, or from any other massacres and disappearances, this is where the federal government got hit on the snout, this drop made the spill, the other victims were kind of lucky to be spared the torture or the disappearance, while the general of the cowardly coward mexican armed forces says they were lucky the soldiers did not get involved, General Salvador Cienfuegos KNOWS what happened, but he is not talking because he is a cowardly excuse of a soldier, at the service of his president, not at the service of his country...

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  9. Sad to say n bring up over n over, they are never going to find them.

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    1. @6:50 the disappeared in Chile, were the reason of the trials, the chilean military claimed they were following orders, that disobeying would have been "treason" and chose the coward's way even the biggest generals, they were not tried for all the murders, but disappearing the carcasses (operacion Retiro de los Televisores) did not help their case, they are guilty until the person's appear, the mexican government wisely insists the two little bone fragments prove once and for all the disappeared have appeared, they were burned by GU, period...even the concept of "la verdad historica" is to be found on many histories and excuses about the crimes of the pinochetistas, the mexican governing narco-mierdocracia has rehearsed even that...
      #fue el gobierno
      Google: "La Venda Sexy", it is not about porny it is about the degradation the chilean regime, their DINA (gestapo) and their military allowed themselves to come down to under the direction of pinochet's favourite and most apt pupil, general manuel "mano" contreras, who died denying any of it ever happened, in prison de-luxe, but convicted and purging 500 years for crimes against humanity, and awaiting sentences for 580 years more...
      --It all is happening in mexico, but at a bit slower rate, to make it last much longer...no convictions except for the couple imperial of Iguala arrests...

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    2. Pinochet and the disappeared ones.
      A horrible episode,and every country we can think of,they all still received him as a VIP,many were involved and years later still no justice

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    3. Peña Nieto and his government should be charged and tried for crimes against humanity. It is said that 60 thousand Mexican lives have been stolen by the drug wars. The military and the police are complicit in killing their own pueblo, but they also answer to the country's top boss--EPN.

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    4. 60 000 in three years of the peña nieto administration, killed or disappeared and the south americans are extra, not to be seen, spoken or heard ever again...

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  10. It could be a million for all people care. Even you lost intrest

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  11. This whole case is so sad and frustrating for the outside observer,imagine what it must be like for the families?The brutal vicious death Julio Mondragon endured makes you hope they all didn't go through that?What was that whole thing for,why was it so vicious and personal,all those young dudes killed for what?

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  12. State terrorism makes its sicarios do things like that to scare any opponents to the regime, and extreme right operatives are consumed by the idea that they are being "patriotic" and are saving their country with their crimes by the book, the CIA book...

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