Mexican Dirty War

Mexican Dirty War
Part of the Cold War

Mexican Army soldiers in the streets in 1968
Date1964–1982[1][3]
Location
Mexico
Result

Government victory

  • Continued rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
  • Most leftist guerrilla groups disbanded

After the conflict

Belligerents

Left-wing groups[1]

 Mexico

Casualties and losses
Estimated at least 3,000 people disappeared and executed, 3,000 political prisoners, and 7,000 tortured[1]: 8 

The Mexican Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra sucia) was the Mexican theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-ruled government under the presidencies of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, and José López Portillo, which were backed by the U.S. government, and left-wing student and guerrilla groups.[6][7] During the war, government forces carried out disappearances (estimated at 1,200),[8] systematic torture, and "probable extrajudicial executions".[9]

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico was persuaded to be part of both Operation Intercept[10] and Operation Condor,[11] developed between 1975 and 1978, with the pretext to fight against the cultivation of opium and marijuana in the "Golden Triangle", particularly in Sinaloa.[12]

The operation, commanded by General José Hernández Toledo,[13] was a flop with no major drug-lord captures, but many abuses and acts of repression were committed.[14]

The judicial investigation into state crimes against political movements opened only at the end of the 71-year long PRI regime and the accession to power in 2000 of Vicente Fox, who created the Special Prosecutor's Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past (FEMOSPP). Despite revealing much about the conflict's history, the FEMOSPP has been unable to finalize prosecutions against the Dirty War's main instigators.[15]

In the early 1960s, former schoolteachers Genaro Vázquez Rojas and Lucio Cabañas created their own “armed rebellion” in Guerrero’s mountains. Their rebellion group worked to counter other militant groups not aligned with their goals and committed robberies and kidnappings for ransom of rich people in their region of operation to finance their struggle. During clashes with Mexican government forces, both militias and the government used indiscriminate force, causing civilian collateral damages. In 1971, three major kidnappings of rich people produced "millions of pesos" through ransom for the rebels, who used the money to continue their fight against the government and rich, abusive landowners.[16]

In March 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador publicly released the archives of the defunct Federal Security Directorate, which contain a great amount of previously undisclosed information about the Dirty War and the political persecution by the PRI governments. López Obrador said, "We lived for decades under an authoritarian regime that limited freedoms and persecuted those who struggled for social change", and issued an official apology on behalf of the Mexican State to the victims of the repression. He also said judicial action would be taken against the surviving perpetrators of the repression, and promised that surviving victims would be able to claim compensation.[17][18]

  1. ^ a b c Calderon, Fernando Herrera; Cedillo, Adela (2012). Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964–1982. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-88904-9.
  2. ^ Boyle, Kate. "Human Rights and the Dirty War in Mexico". gwu.edu. Archived from the original on April 21, 2023. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
  3. ^ Forero, Juan (November 22, 2006). "Details of Mexico's Dirty Wars From 1960s to 1980s Released". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 29, 2018. Retrieved December 29, 2018.
  4. ^ "Fue Un Dos de Octubre". Archived from the original on June 14, 2018. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  5. ^ "ELECCIONES-MEXICO: Fox gana la Presidencia". July 3, 2000. Archived from the original on February 1, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  6. ^ Reuters Editorial (April 5, 2007). "Rights group urges Mexico to resolve "dirty war"". Reuters. Archived from the original on March 9, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2016. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  7. ^ Michael Evans. "The Dawn of Mexico's Dirty War". Gwu.edu. Archived from the original on December 19, 2003. Retrieved October 29, 2016.
  8. ^ Reuters Editorial (July 8, 2008). "Mexico looks for 'dirty war' graves on army base". Reuters. Archived from the original on June 16, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2016. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference informe was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Fernández-Velázque, Juan Antonio (2018). "La Operación Cóndor en los Altos de Sinaloa: La Labor del Estado Durante los Primeros Años de la Campaña Antidroga". Ra Ximhai. 14 (1): 63–84. doi:10.35197/rx.14.01.2018.04.jf. S2CID 240455351. Archived from the original on November 8, 2022. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  11. ^ México, Redacción El Sol de. "Operación Cóndor, el inicio de la guerra contra el narcotráfico". El Sol de México | Noticias, Deportes, Gossip, Columnas (in Spanish). Archived from the original on July 7, 2022. Retrieved December 18, 2022.
  12. ^ Astorga, Luis (2004). "Géopolitique des drogues au Mexique". Hérodote. 112 (1): 49–65. doi:10.3917/her.112.0049. Archived from the original on March 15, 2022. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  13. ^ "Drug Trafficking in Mexico - Discussion Paper 36". Archived from the original on July 7, 2022. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  14. ^ "Operation Condor, the War on Drugs, and Counterinsurgency in the Golden Triangle (1977-1983) | Kellogg Institute for International Studies". Archived from the original on July 7, 2022. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  15. ^ http://catarina.udlap.mx/u_dl_a/tales/documentos/lri/garcia_r_d/capitulo2.pdf Archived July 13, 2019, at the Wayback Machine [bare URL PDF]
  16. ^ "The Dawn of Mexico's Dirty War". nsarchive2.gwu.edu. Archived from the original on December 13, 2023. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  17. ^ "Mexico's president opens archives on 'dirty war period". Yahoo News. AFP. Archived from the original on March 6, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  18. ^ Zavala, Misael. "Estado pide perdón a víctimas de represión". El Universal. Archived from the original on March 6, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2019.