Ayotzinapa File: Abarca ordered the release of key documents the night of the attack on normalistas Alert and escape Dismayed? COVID mystery visitors: what went wrong in the global vaccination plan?
Marriage encompasses. //Photo: Cuartoscuro
The night that the Ayotzinapa normalistas in Iguala were attacked, the former municipal president, José Luis Abarca, told the secretary of the Guerrero government that he “was asleep” and nothing serious was happening. However, at the same time he issued instructions for key documents to be removed from the town hall and made arrangements for a trip to Mexico City.
This revelation was made by Abarca's private secretary -whose identity has been withheld for security reasons-, who detailed to the Attorney General's Office (PGR) the movements of his then boss, from when he attended his wife's report until who fled.
According to the local official's account, Abarca knew all the time what was happening with the normalistas and took several actions, all of them aimed at speeding up the license in his charge, eliminating evidence and escaping from the municipality.
The private secretary also said that Abarca managed to leave the City Hall palace after the council session on September 30, despite the fact that there were ministerial police waiting for him outside the building.
A day before escaping, Abarca told Guerrero's then health secretary, Lázaro Mazón, that he was "dismayed" by the attack on the students, although according to statements by the alleged Guerreros Unidos spy chief, it was the former president. municipal officer who instructed the aggression through the policemen of the municipality he governed.
The previous statements are found in the public version of the 83-volume file of the investigation opened by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) for the disappearance of the 43 normalistas from Ayotzinapa, to which Animal Politico had access.
José Luis Abarca is currently imprisoned in the Altiplano federal prison, in the State of Mexico, under criminal proceedings for the kidnapping of normalistas and the kidnapping and murder of businessman Arturo Hernández Cardona.
In his statement, the private secretary confirmed that José Luis Abarca attended the event of the report of his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda, who served as president of the DIF in the municipality. The Abarcas remained at the event until minutes before 9:00 p.m.
The policemen who worked as escorts for Abarca confirmed separately that he went to have dinner with his family at a taco joint and then returned to the home of the then municipal president.
The private secretary continues his story by pointing out that at approximately 9:30 p.m. a person who entered the Municipal Palace said that there were "riots or gunshots." Faced with this situation, he contacted the municipal president who told him: "The Secretary of Security has already informed me, go rest and see you tomorrow."
For that reason he went to his house but, at approximately 3 in the morning, he received a call from Abarca's cell phone who told him:
“We are going to get the most important out of the documentation of the City Council (…) apparently there are people who have died and there could be demonstrations.”
In response to these instructions, the secretary went to the presidential office from where he obtained "several official acknowledgments" of documents which are not detailed in the statement. Later there was a meeting at the home of the municipal president where a statement was prepared on the attack on the normalistas.
On September 29, Abarca told his secretary that he would “go to the Federal District” together with his wife without detailing who they would see. Once there, he sent her a text message in which he asked her for information on the date on which the agreement for the Single Police Command had been signed. The PGR assumes that on that trip the presidential couple made arrangements for his escape.
On the morning of September 30, the private secretary continues, Abarca sent him a file to print with the express instruction that "no one" could see it. It was his farewell speech. At approximately 3:00 p.m., the town hall session was held where Abarca requested a 30-day license.
“It was the last contact I had with Abarca. The council session continued and shortly after they informed us that there were ministerial police waiting outside, but Abarca managed to leave, ”said his former secretary.
The statements of the private secretary, added to those of the former director of the municipal police of Iguala, Felipe Flores -currently a fugitive-, confirm that Abarca was aware of the seriousness of the situation almost from the first moment. However, before the state authorities he wanted to give a different impression.
For example, the secretary of the Government of Guerrero, Jesús Martínez Garbelo, declared that he insistently sought the then municipal president of Iguala to inform him about the veracity of the confrontations that were reported between normalistas and elements of public security.
“When he finally answered me, he told me that he was at his home asleep and that he had stayed at a dance, that the party was good, and that he had no more information,” he said.
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Another state official who had contact in the 72 hours after the attack by the normalistas with Abarca was Lázaro Mazón, a friend of the former municipal president and at that time the state secretary of Health.
He said that on Monday, September 29, he had a conversation with Abarca via Whatsapp in which he told him that he was "dismayed" by what had happened and also seemed to say goodbye. Here the transcript:
Lazarus: Everything okay?
Abarca: Don't believe it, I'm dismayed...
Lazarus: Me too.
Covers: Someday I will sit down and talk with you
Lazarus: Yes.
Covers: Goodbye
Lazarus. Calm down…
It encompasses: For your friendship, for everything, I thank you, goodbye...
Lázaro: Just take good care of yourself.
The private secretary explained that one of his functions was to keep the appointment schedule of the people who visited José Luis Abarca at the City Hall, but there were some that were made without being recorded.
One of them was that of a person who administered the cockfights in a palenque and who went to the mayor's office even when he did not expect it.
“This was one of the people who managed the palenque de gallos that is located within the grounds of the fairs. I saw this subject without me scheduling said appointments, ”said the private secretary.
According to PGR investigations, two of the subjects involved in the disappearance of the normalistas and who were leaders in the area of the Guerreros Unidos criminal group, Gildardo Astudillo, alias el Gil, and another person nicknamed el Chocky, were also engaged in to raising fighting cocks for the palenques.
Others who frequently went to see Abarca, according to his former personal secretary, were members of the so-called Chicago Migrants Association or Chicago Migrants Club, who carried suitcases with clothes that Abarca ordered from them.
"This association contributed money to the municipality for works and other concepts," reads the statement.
The ministerial testimony also reveals that Abarca had appointed his accountant as Secretary of Finance of the municipality, and she was the one who kept the accounting of his companies and of his six or seven stores in the Jewelery Center of Iguala.
José Luis Abarca and his wife were detained by federal agents on November 3 of last year at a home in the Iztapalapa delegation. According to the part of his capture, both tried to offer half a million pesos and a luxury car to the police so that they would let them go.
Until now, and despite the fact that he is already facing two criminal proceedings, the former mayor of Iguala has not acknowledged in any ministerial statement that he was the intellectual author of the attack on the normalistas.
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