The government of Claudia Sheinbaum and that of Enrique Peña Nieto inadvertently coincide today. The long and sad night of Iguala, with the disappearance of the 43 from Ayotzinapa, has Ángel Aguirre Rivero as one of those responsible. The difference is the way of cracking the nuts between the new regime and the previous one, which could lead to more Peña Nieto supporters being sought by justice.
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In the old regime, the president succumbed to the imperial temptation and, at the same time, allowed governors to assume the role of viceroys. That exchange between the Palace and the States was based on the understanding that the territories should not fall into misgovernment. Upon returning to the presidency in 2012, the PRI system reinstated the little federalist tolerance leash for strongmen and abuses in the States, in exchange for control.
And although Aguirre Rivero won in 2011 the second governorship he led under the banners of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Citizen Convergence (now MC), and the Labor Party (PT), the reality is that he is and was a classic PRI member. One forged under the protection of hardline governors, such as José Francisco Ruiz Massieu or Rubén Figueroa Alcocer himself, whom he replaced in 1996.
Before that year—in which, due to the repression in Aguas Blancas, where 17 peasants protesting against Figueroa’s government were gunned down (he being the son of another strongman)—he was appointed interim governor until 1999, Aguirre Rivero served in various administrations as Secretary General of Government, Secretary of Economic Development, and president of the Guerrero PRI. That is his lineage, and his leftist candidacy was mere opportunism, both from the coalition and himself.
In 2011, he defeated a PRI that, although heading towards the 2012 presidential elections looked favored with Peña Nieto, who was media-crafted down to the buttons on his shirts, did not resonate equally inside the country. In many States, the social justice discourse of neocardenismo first, and obradorismo later, had taken hold. In 2005, Zeferino Torreblanca was the first PRD member to win Guerrero.
The twists of life led Aguirre Rivero to become a governor when his boss was ousted by the PRI member Zedillo, who understood that his compadre Figueroa Alcocer was unsustainable after a massacre whose video was broadcast by Televisa—which at the same time spoke of the times in terms of initial openness, and how unbearable the old methods to “maintain control” had become.
Those same twists of fate put his governorship in the spotlight on the night of September 26, 2014. The students of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School were preparing a trip to Mexico City. Little more than that is solid ground after some of the students were kidnapped on buses near Iguala, where a PRD mayor was also in office, imprisoned since then.
The trail of 43 Ayotzinapa students was lost, and three others lost their lives in a spree that claimed three more victims. And if after years of local, national investigations and with foreign journalists and experts Mexico does not know the whereabouts or how the students died, it is largely because the system got entangled in protecting its highest currency: impunity.
Although he clung to office for the following four weeks, Ángel Aguirre Rivero was forced to resign. At that time, behind closed doors, the PRI regime governing the Republic complained that he was one of those responsible for what happened. Not because he was believed to be the criminal author of the massacre, but because of the periods of lack of control and misinformation before and after the events.
And this is where the government of President Sheinbaum and Peña Nieto now coincide. Aguirre Rivero was arrested this Thursday accused of the disappearance of video material that would have recorded part of the crimes committed that afternoon/night. Fallen from political grace since 2014, and having suffered the death of a son, the former governor has now become an easy target for Morena.
Because, unlike what happened with Ernesto Ruffo Appel, former PAN governor arrested on July 16 and held in a maximum-security prison, Aguirre Rivero is not a symbol of alternations, nor an apostle of transition democracy, nor anything of the sort. He is an old PRI member dressed in PRD garments, a mantle now renounced by many Morena members whom the PRD sheltered.
Aguirre Rivero, here yes, like Ruffo Appel, deserves that his former political travel companions do not lash out at him; he deserves that in a fair trial, on one hand, his procedural rights are respected, and on the other, that he is not made a scapegoat to win the sympathies of the families of the 43 from Ayotzinapa first, and of an entire society aggrieved by that basically unpunished massacre.
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Being so different the former governors arrested in the last month and so different the charges against them (Ruffo Appel for fuel theft, Aguirre Rivero for ordering the disappearance of videos that would have recorded the kidnapping in a crime considered a crime against humanity), for the Attorney General’s Office both are a reminder that their work is under scrutiny and in question.
The wave of outrage caused by the exhibitionist arrest of Ruffo Appel in Ensenada, his place of residence, will not occur with Aguirre Rivero.
But doubts about the selective use of the justice apparatus by Claudia Sheinbaum will increase the demand that her government, which includes an Attorney General’s Office that does not even keep up appearances when submitting to the Palace, targets adversaries while dispensing all kinds of favors, rhetorical and even police protection, to Morena figures with judicial accusations.
It is here where what can be a shrewd decision to finally learn more about the tragic whereabouts of the 43 from Ayotzinapa, such as the arrest of Aguirre accused of disappearing crucial videos to assign responsibilities, on another level becomes another notch in the discretionary way of Obradorism to only prosecute suspects from parties other than its own.
The arrest of Aguirre, defended yesterday by President Sheinbaum dismissing that it is a political revenge—the prosecutor Ernestina Godoy has reported that since January she has had two witnesses of how the former governor ordered the destruction of evidence—was within reach. But now it must yield specific results. Soon, and not only because the relatives of the 43 have waited too long.
Obradorism dealt another spectacular blow in August 2022 when it ordered the arrest of former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, author of the controversial “historical truth” about the massacre, an investigation that closed the case by saying the students had been burned in the Cocula dump and their remains disappeared in the San Juan river.
It was a resounding blow that, however, every day that passes—after a couple of years in jail, and after serving house arrest, the now former Peña official, a septuagenarian, is forced to wear an electronic bracelet—raises more doubts about what Obradorism obtained with that high-profile arrest, apart from spectacularity and a kind of revenge.
Detaining Murillo Karam was a bigger blow than Aguirre Rivero. This second arrest has fewer costs, but it can also backfire on Claudia Sheinbaum: if the commitment to investigate whoever falls is genuine, if the former PRD governor is a pledge of that promise, does it mean the president will demand the Mexican Army finally cooperate to clarify Ayotzinapa?
If Ángel Aguirre was arrested accused of destroying evidence, which if true would represent progress in terms of justice even if those videos were not recovered, then the only thing expected is that Obradorism finally demands the Mexican Army fully open its case files, something it has refused to do. If it does not, Thursday’s arrest will cost the president dearly.
So not only the upper chain of Peña’s supporters, who tolerated Aguirre in 2014, should fear what comes next. Others still need to provide evidence.
