"One cannot live with a death within: one must choose between throwing it far away like rotten fruit or letting oneself die from the infection." Alaíde Foppa, "La sin ventura" Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico January of 2005 For: Bernardo Bátiz Vázquez
Office of the Attorney General of the Federal District
Mexico, DF Señor Bátiz: Please excuse the fact that I am just now responding to the letter, dated September 7, 2004, which you sent me. The reasons for my tardiness have nothing to do with apathy or lack of interest. What happened is that your missive reached me in mid-October, and afterwards I had to consult with Digna Ochoa y Plácido's relatives and with the family of Pável González González in order to obtain their authorization for answering you. Once I received that, I set about studying, attentively and in detail, the files of both cases, as well as everything which had been published (and what had not been published) regarding them. I am attaching your letter, for anyone who would like to familiarize themselves with it in its entirety. I shall only be referring to it on three points, which assert: 1. According to the prosecutor under your charge, Digna Ochoa y Plácido committed suicide. You present Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, Magda Gómez and Miguel Angel Granados Chapa as supporting that conclusion (I do not know whether these persons are in agreement with the terms in which you mention them. In any event, I am sending them a copy of this letter). In addition, you add in your letter that, unlike previous administrations - where they resorted to "lies and to adapting the evidence to the interests of the moment - the Attorney General's Office of DF (PGJDF), of which you are in charge, opted for the truth. 2. The case of Pável González González has not been closed, but you suggest (and the investigation so leads you to believe) that it was a suicide. 3. You would like to be granted honor and credibility, having been an advisor to the EZLN-federal government dialogue and as an official of a so-called "democratic" government. Understand that I have, in addition to consulting various lawyers, personally reviewed the investigation of the case, as well as the Special Report on the Irregularities in the Investigation Opened into the Death of Digna Ochoa y Plácido by the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District, as well as newspaper materials and the opinions of those who accompanied Digna as relatives, friends and professionals. A large number of my observations have already been stated by them, and they have all been met with contempt and mockery by those people who work under your orders. As any honest person reviewing those materials can see, the investigation has been riddled with irregularities, inefficiencies and baseness. In short, the officials under your command have conducted themselves with dishonesty. Neither Señor Renato Sales Heredia (whose poor performance was recently reconfirmed in the case of Señor Bejarano), nor Margarita Guerra y Tejeda, have been able to give a satisfactory response to the following questions: 1. Concerning the rejection of those seeking truth and justice Why has the PGJDF, which you direct, refused to accept the forensic medical, criminal and forensic chemical evidence from the families, despite the fact that, according to the Constitution, it is a right of the victim's relatives to provide evidence in the investigation? One of the PGJDF's arguments for not accepting the contributory evidence was that the subject of the investigation had been fully proven by the mere fact of the expert tests having been carried out. These tests should be carried out under certain scientific and methodological requirements, which means that they can be "proven" several times. Why, then, did each report provide different results based on the same evidence when the same tests were performed? 2. Concerning how the reports were expediently adapted Of the four reports, the first two (with the hypothesis of homicide) were thrown out by the PGJDF, according to them because they were "not in keeping with a control mechanism, because the evidence contained was not sufficient to draw invalid conclusions or adjusted to the truth of the facts." Concerning the third report (suicide hypothesis), it was argued that it was the one closest to reality, but it was incomplete. Another report was therefore ordered which was not, however, carried out under scientific and verifiable methodology and which did not contain a control mechanism. Why, if they threw out the first two reports, did the third one reinforce their conclusions (suicide) based on elements of the first two (homicide)? Why do no signs appear in the first two reports which could point towards a suicide investigation? Why does the suicide hypothesis not appear until the third report, which was carried out eight months later based only on photographs? Which report is valid? The one that was made by observing the corpse or the one that was done with photographs of the corpse? (The PGJDF recognized the latter one). 3. Concerning the bad faith and incompetence of the DF Attorney General's Office What were the measures which the PGJDF took in order to conserve intact the scene where Digna's homicide took place? (This is where, eight months later, the criminal field report was made which the PGJDF took into account in pronouncing "no penal action enforcement," in other words, in stating that it was a suicide.) Why does the autopsy report state that Digna presented with generalized muscular flaccidity and maintain that, after having been dead for 15 to 16 hours, the corpse did not show the rigidity that would correspond to that time period? According to the last position in which Digna was found, there should have been bruises (marks on the body) on the left part of her body. Why were there no marks there? According to the PGJDF's evidence, there were people in the office with Digna on the afternoon prior to her death. Why were no traces of anyone's fingerprints found in the office? Digna's autopsy lasted for one hour and 30 minutes (it began at 2:30 in the morning and ended at four). There were no x-rays taken, and the injuries were not described in full. Depending on the complexity, autopsies can take up to 24 hours. Why did Digna's take such little time? 4. Concerning signs which contradict the suicide hypothesis How can it be explained that Digna's head was reclining on the sofa on the same side where it received the impact from the projectile and her wounded leg was bent? Assuming that Digna had shot herself in the head, how can one explain the fact that the weapon was found underneath her body? If one of the bullets entered through the left side of the head, the blood would follow the trajectory from above downwards on the left side. Why was her face completely covered with blood? Why was all of her hair covering her face from back to front? According to the last report which served as proof for the PGJDF, Digna fired into the armchair in order to test the weapon, she got up and walked towards the other armchair, sat down, and fired with her right hand into her left thigh. She waited, sitting, for a few minutes, got up and returned to the other armchair where she knelt down and fired with her left hand into the left side of her head. At what point did she fling her hair forward? How did the bruise occur on her right thigh? According to the PGJDF, there was nothing to indicate force, but how did the bruises on her right thigh occur? Why was her headband thrown on the floor, faraway from her corpse? Why was her blouse button found on the floor, and why were signs identified on the blouse of its having been torn (raised threads)? Why did Digna scatter white powder where the events took place? According to the official hypothesis of the three shots at three different times, at what point did Digna scatter the powder about and sprinkle it on top of herself? 5. Concerning complicit silence Why did the Miguel Agustín Pro Human Rights Center promote the suicide hypothesis in Mexico and abroad, even before the investigations ended? If it is a human rights defense organization, why did it not speak out about the irregularities - which were clear no matter how you looked at them - in the investigation? Offering evidence on the part of victims is a constitutional guarantee. Why, if the PGJDF did not allow Digna's relatives to exercise this right, violating her individual human rights, did the PRO not speak out in that regard? 6. Concerning the expedient alteration of reports The doctors who performed the autopsy of October 20, 2001, who could see the cranial cavity and who saw the specific bone where the projectile was still imbedded, concluded that the bullet which produced the wound in the head had entered through the left temporal and followed the general direction of left to right, from below upwards and from front to back (a fact which strengthens the hypothesis of homicide). Why did they change their opinion, months later, about the direction and trajectory of the projectile when they were shown a human skull that was not Digna's? Why did the first experts, who went to the scene of the events and who saw the corpse, state that there was a bruise on Digna's right thigh, but, months later and "analyzing" only photographs, said that there was no such thing? If Digna made the threats herself, as the PGJDF maintains, why were traces of saliva with masculine genotype found on the envelopes? 7. Concerning the past rewritten Did you know, Señor Bátiz, that the experts Vicente Jaime Corona Méndez and Rafael Moreno González, who participated in your "investigation" of the Digna Ochoa case, were also experts in the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta (one of so many crimes of which the truth will perhaps never be known)? Did you know that the Director of the Medical Forensic Service in DF until April of 2004 (and who would have had Digna's case under his purview) was José Ramón Fernández Cáceres, concerning whom the CNDH issued Recommendation 50/95, in March of 1995, for having falsified information by preparing medical certificates and omitting bruises which were the result of the torture of detainees? Did you know that the ones who were tortured were alleged zapatistas who had been detained in Yanga, Veracruz? Did you know that one of the lawyers for those who were tortured was Digna Ochoa y Plácido, who was, therefore, an opposing party to Señor Fernández Cáceres? Your officials, Señor Bátiz, were not only clumsy and incompetent in the case of Digna Ochoa's death. They were also dishonest and contemptible. In order to strengthen the suicide theory, they set out to destroy Digna's reputation. They rummaged around in her personal life in order to present her as mentally unbalanced. In the purest style of the dirty war of the 70s, they leaked false information to "journalists" so the public would see someone who fought for the human rights of the downtrodden and social activists as a cunning and evil lunatic. By destroying Digna Ochoa's reputation, they were trying not only to lend validity to their suicide hypothesis, they also wanted to ingratiate themselves with those sectors of the federal Army which Digna had confronted. Destroying the moral authority of a social fighter and exonerating from guilt those who violate human rights: quite a piece of work. And there is more. They added stupidity to dishonesty and contemptibility. There is ample proof, from the PGJDF's "investigating" Digna's personal life, asking the Mother Superior of the congregation to which Digna belonged the following question: "You, what kind of weapons do you use?" Then there was the argument that Digna committed suicide because they hadn't invite her to work in the DF government! And then supporting the suicide hypothesis with a book that wasn't even hers and by citing a passage that notes...that suicides are in a good mood before they kill themselves! An epigram appears at the beginning of this letter by Alaíde Foppa, a writer who was disappeared by the Guatemala dictatorship at the beginning of the 80s. They disappeared her because she was on the side of the downtrodden. With that poem as evidence, your officials would have said that she had committed suicide. As his relatives have warned, the case of the young UNAM and ENAH student, Noel Pável González González is going down the same path of mudslinging as has the death of Digna Ochoa y Plácido. You say that Pável's father recognized the posthumous handwriting and the reasons for which he purportedly committed suicide. The father recognizes the handwriting, but he has clarified that the contents [of the note] are not Pável's style. The note reads: "Father and mother take care of my brother, it's my decision and don't blame anybody." But Pável never referred to his parents in those terms, and he would have written something with more philosophical depth. It looks more like a note dictated by him or the killers than a farewell note. >From the beginning of the investigation, the representatives of the PGJDF have insisted on its being a suicide or a homosexual "crime of passion." In a display of cynicism and incompetence, they have avoided answering the key questions: Why wasn't the Public Ministry present in order to write up the exam when Pável's body was found? Why did the Public Ministry first "mislay" the file and then refuse to give the DF Human Rights [Commission] a copy? Why are there contradictions between one Public Ministry and the other regarding the time of Pável's death? (One says 17 hours before being found, and the other says 96 hours.) Why didn't the pen or pencil, with which he supposedly wrote the posthumous message, turn up anywhere? Why didn't they show the body to his parents until the day after it was found? Why was Pável's body nude? Why were injuries found on his private parts? Why did legislators from the PRD, PT and PRI declare themselves to be in favor of a serious and objective investigation, and the ones from PAN (the electoral arm of the Mexican far right) did not? Why were the reports not investigated about incidents of violence which took place around the UNAM Faculty of Philosophy and Letters on the day and time that Pável was last seen alive? Why haven't the threats been investigated that Pável's student compañeros received from the far right group El Yunque? Why hasn't the veiled threat been investigated that was directed by a Government official, on April 29, 2004 to Pável's mother, who stated: "We know who Pável was, that he was messing around with the altermundistas at the economic summits in Cancún, Monterrey...Señora, take care of the only son you have left." Why was the information not investigated which was received by journalist Miguel Angel Granados Chapa and which he released in his column Plaza Pública in the Reforma newspaper in June of 2004? What the PGJDF has done, Señor Bátiz, is not discover the truth nor administer justice. The only thing which it has proposed, and achieved, has been to ingratiate itself with the right by slinging mud at the lives of two persons who are worth more than all the officials of the DF Government put together. And they have done it in the most contemptible manner possible: by tarnishing their deaths. To the pain, suffering and indignation which those deaths have caused us, your officials have added the humiliation and gall of watching Digna and Pável's deaths being buried through defamation, with the excuse of being "revolutionary" and "democratic." Let us hope that the same thing happens to them. Let us hope that, once dead, someone shall concern themselves with prying into their private lives and, with morbid evil, inventing slanders and damaging information, and ruining the path of their lives at the precise moment when there is nothing they can do in their defense. Let us hope they cover their tomb as they have covered Digna and Pável's: not with the flower of truth, but with lies and slander. Because they can say they are good, democratic and leftist, and that Digna and Pável were lunatics and suicides, because neither Digna nor Pável are here to defend themselves. Or perhaps they are here, but in those we wish to honor for their ideals and commitments. Let us hope that those who were counting that the dirty war of the 70s would be cleared up - once the PRD reached the federal government - realize that it will not be so. Neither truth nor justice come as a concession from above, they are built from below. With the PRD on top, what is going to happen is that all the victims of the dirty war will have "committed suicide" after having set the "scene" of a cause: the struggle for justice of the dispossessed. That cause which the PRD, drunk with power, has forgotten. Señor Bátiz: In honor of the truth and out of sympathy and respect for those who have given their lives and deaths "on this path of change for the better" (to use your own words), I find myself obligated to demand that, making use of your powers, you reopen Digna's case, first restoring the moral value which they destroyed with their clumsy investigation, and that you compel your officials to conduct themselves with responsibility, seriousness and competence in the case of Pável. Only in that way will you bring honor to the convictions you say you have. That is all. From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January of 2005 PS: Another thing, could you tell your officials that the threats which they have sent us, subtly or blatantly, in order to "convince us" to remain quiet on this matter have been, as is obvious, useless. Another PS: As for having been an EZLN advisor during the peace talks, Señor Bátiz, that is not a guarantee of anything. It's not about you, but there is an intellectual who says he is leftist and democratic, who was an advisor at that dialogue, and now he is unofficial defender of the Wal-Mart in Teotihuacán (perhaps in exchange for their giving him the distinguished employee card, pardon, the distinguished client one). Or perhaps there are people who are not one thing or the other, depending on how it suits them, according to the weekly offers. One more PS: I do not see how you can send greetings to my zapatista compañeros from someone who directs the agency which tarnished Digna's name and is in the process of doing it with Pável's. How can I do that? cc: Relatives of Digna Ochoa y Plácido
cc: Relatives of Noel Pável González González
cc: Rosario Ibarra de Piedra
cc: Magda Gómez
cc: Miguel Angel Granados Chapa
cc: Digna and Pável, wherever they might be ************************************************** [Letter from Bernardo Bátiz to Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos] Mexico, DF, September 7, 2004.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Presente. In the first part of your communiqué, published in La Jornada on August 20 of this year, you make reference to two cases - Digna Ochoa and Noel Pável González - which have been matters of investigation for the Attorney General's Office of the Federal District. In honor of the truth and out of sympathy and respect for your cause (sympathy expressed by me in articles and by my presence in San Cristóbal), I feel obligated to write these lines. In the case of Digna Ochoa, at the time it seemed to me and my colleagues that it was a homicide, but as the investigation deepened, objectively and without prejudice, facts were accumulating that suggested she herself took her own life, until the conclusion was reached that no one other than she was at the scene, and that it was she who shot herself, first in the leg and minutes later in the head. It is important to remember that, in view of the opinions of groups of friends of Digna Ochoa and human rights defenders, the decision was made to review the entire investigation and to repeat tests by a team totally different from the one that initially reached the conclusion of suicide. I agreed to designate a special prosecutor, who Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, Magda Gómez and Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, as representatives of the views opposed to suicide, proposed to me, without the least intervention on my part. The person designated was the judge, Margarita Guerra y Tejada, who accepted the position and who formed a group of investigators, Public Ministry agents and specialists who were completely removed from the initial group, some of whom were contracted as outside consultants to the Attorney General's Office. The new Prosecutor's conclusion, after almost a year of work, was the same which the first group, headed by Renato Sales Heredia, had reached. The case of the young man Pável, whose body turned up more than 3900 meters high - hung from the arms of the cross which is on the Ajusco hill, known as Pico de Aguila - has also been investigated. A posthumous message was found, as well as other indications that it was a suicide. Nonetheless, at the request of relatives and compañeros, the case has not been closed and is continuing to be investigated. The posthumous message is in a notebook of Pável's, found close to his body, in a backpack, written in his own handwriting, recognized by his father and confirmed by handwriting experts. This message is a farewell note and a message to his family. I admit that it may be difficult for some people to believe in the conclusions which we reached in these cases, especially after so many years and so many precedents of lies and of expedient alterations at the time. I also admit that neither I, nor those who took part in the investigation, are exempt from having made mistakes. That is why I respect those, like you, who hold a contrary opinion. What I can assure you is that we opted, in both cases, for the truth. I know that Digna Ochoa had been involved, from her work at Centro Pro and along with other lawyers, in the defense of alleged zapatistas who had been incarcerated due to the events of February of 1995. I also know that Pável collaborated with zapatista communities and municipalities. That, and many other things, testify to their commitment and their generosity. But both of them, like all human beings, were a mixture of lights and shadows. Their undeniable merits and virtues are in no way devalued by the decision they made nor by other aspects of their lives which appeared in the investigation. Their work had nothing to do with the ministerial results of the investigation. When the conclusion of suicide was reached, it was based on detailed examination of the evidence. The comandantes of the CCRI of the EZLN honored me with an invitation to participate as advisor during one of the stages of the peace talks in Chiapas. The convictions which led me to participate then are the same as today. The position which I occupy, and in which I serve my city, is temporary. I do not know where I will be tomorrow, but, wherever it might be, you can be certain that those convictions will be the same. Lastly, I ask that you send my greetings to the zapatista indigenous who have contributed so much to us in this path of change for the better. Bernardo Bátiz Vázquez * Translated by irlandesa