Renewal of "Dirty War" Excavations in Atoyac

(Atoyac, 18 October, JG) The office of the Federal Attorney General will begin new excavations in Atoyac, near Acapulco, starting on Thursday, according to Rodolfo Valadez Luviano, correspondent for the Jornal de Guerrero. The non-profit “Association of Family Members of the Detained, the Disappeared and the Victims of Violence in Mexico” (Afadem) is a group dedicated to uncovering human rights violations and recovering the bodies of persons captured by military and police personnel who vanished without a trace. Atoyac was the site of what is now known as the “Dirty War” in which hundreds of citizens, mainly indigenous people, disappeared between the mid-1960’s and the late 1980’s. The military have been implicated as well as the PRI governor of Guerrero at the time, who was accused of sanctioning the invasion of the town by military and police authorities, and the death, disappearance, rape and assaults on hundreds of civilians.

According to the institution’s vice-president, Tita Radilla Martínez, whose father was captured during the “Dirty War” and was never seen or heard from again, the investigation by the Attorney General’s office will focus on the former military base in Atoyac (now city property), mainly by the firing range. “Even though these are the same locations as were examined two years ago, we now have heavy equipment to help us, and we hope that something will turn up,” she said. Previous efforts, described as superficial, turned up a few buried human corpses.

The experts at the Attorney General’s office indicated that the investigation is likely to last from October 19th through the 29th, unless the preliminary findings justify an extension of the search.