2016)

Anything goes in the context of a presidential race. Pandering, while not unexpected, however, has taken on new heights during 2016's Democratic Party's primaries. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a presidential hopeful, sunk to a new low on Tuesday when she feigned limited knowledge on the Ayotzinapa case.

Antonio Tizapa, padre de estudiante de #Ayotzinapa, le responde a @HillaryClinton: pic.lacartita.com/GtohtjPFpf
— La Cartita 🇲🇽 (@LaCartita) 22 de abril de 2016

Ayotzinapa father questions presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, on Ayotzinapa statement: "are you with the Mexican people or Mexican government?" (4/26/2016)

The IGIE reports that the students bodies were not cremated in a municipal waste dump of Cocula on September 27, 2014. In parallel, the CIDH, the Mexican government's official human rights commission, also found that there were federal police officers involved in the kidnapping of the students.

Mexican Community Unites At the OAS (4/24/2016) Foto: La Cartita

Antonio Tizapa's receive large scale coverage from Venezuelan state media. (Telesur)

The Ayotzinapa case is now at a critical juncture. Institutionally, the case has hit a roadblock because of the power wielded by the Mexican government on international forums like the UN and IACHR, a commission of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Independent Group of International Experts (IGIE or "GIEI", acronym in Español), a group of human rights lawyers and experts who function as investigators for the Inter American Court of Human Rights, will close its investigation into the actual whereabouts of the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa on April 30th, 2016.

The Mexican government has denied the veracity of the group's findings, reputation and maintained its innocence despite mounting evidence of direct and high level involvement by its federal institutions. The disappearance of the 43 students of Guerrero, as many western media have wrongly reported, is neither an isolated case nor an incident caused by purely local conditions. The notion that criminal bandits may have been involved is a moot point: most officers moonlight, either by circumstance or willingly, in criminal activities due to the criminal ties of their politically appointed superiors. In other words, the entire state has lost even the semblance of legitimacy due to its intertwined ties with narcotics trafficking, kidnapping and extortion rackets. Everyone is involved so no one can truly stop doing it.

More to the point with regards to the Ayotzinapa, the key findings are the following (read the IGIE's report here):

-- The students bodies were not cremated in a municipal waste dump of Cocula on September 27, 2014.

-- As a corollary to the first point, no evidence exists that a sufficiently hot fire took place at that particular Cocula dump.

The experts cite various irregularities in the manner the investigation was executed by México's police, or 'PGR', and their counterparts in the Agencia de Investigacion Criminal.

According to the IGIE, the Mexican government has derailed the investigation, derailing efforts to identify key suspects and mismanaged evidence.

U.S. Complicity In The Ayotzinapa Case

Anything goes in the context of a presidential race. Pandering, while not unexpected, has taken on new heights during this years presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and current presidential hopeful, sunk to a new low on Tuesday when she expressed limited knowledge and opportunistic outrage over the Ayotzinapa case, along with solutions the Mexican public already rejects. The reaction would almost lead one to believe that Clinton had nothing to do with the expansion of the Merida Initiative.

For most Mexicans, Clinton's words were neither spontaneous, nor were they genuine. "Clinton knows more than she's saying", alleges Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador - a credible allegation, I think. Given that Clinton was somewhat of a micromanager during her time as Secretary of State, its tough to believe she didn't know what the military was capable of doing to people opposite of their interests.

Apparently, its a vocal group that echoes these feelings of resentment towards Clinton's time as Secretary of State. For Mr.Antonio Tizapa, Clinton's notion that it would be possible to work within the Mexican government and provide 'justice' underlies a fundamental misconception as to what role the government actually plays within the Mexican community. The links between US aid and violence in the country is obvious. During his 2006-2012 tenure as president, Felipe Calderon ushered in a new era drug-war justified authoritarianism. With Enrique Peña Nieto, all anecdotal and statistical evidence points to an even higher level of impunity than before. Indices for kidnappings, murder and extortion all rose, while cases of military abuses rose along with them.

Finally, the United States is a willing collaborator with the Mexican state. Its diplomatic, military and media support has stalled the Mexican public's efforts to bring truth to the Ayotzinapa case. Most media accounts still place the majority of the focus on the criminal element, but the division between the criminal and official is artificial - nonexistent, false, etc. Virtually every adjective can placed upon the Mexican government except innocent and ignorant about the details of the case. The same holds for the US Government. Whether the consequences of the drug war were intentional or not is all the same for the people who bear them - just ask a Mexican what they really think.