The Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalia General del Estado, FGE) revealed this week that three Guadalajara film students, missing since March 19, were tortured and killed by members of a drug cartel before their bodies were dissolved in tubs of acid.
According to the agency, the narcos mistakenly believed the young men, all in their early 20s, were in the employ of a rival group.
In a press conference Monday, chief investigator Lizeth Torres did not name the cartel behind the murders, but it is believed to be the Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Generacion (CJNG).
So far, two men have been detained in connection with the disposal of the students’ bodies, Torres said. One is Omar “N,” better known as rapper QBA (see story below), who confessed to undertaking the gruesome task for the CJNG in exchange for monetary compensation. Six other men who may have been involved in the crime remain at large, Torres said.
Despite repeated assurances over the past month by the FGE and Governor Aristoteles Sandoval that the matter was being thoroughly investigated, the disappearance of the students – Jesús Daniel Díaz García, 20, Marco Francisco García Ávalos, 20, and Javier Salomón Aceves Gastelum, 25 – provoked angry protests, led by fellow Universidad de Guadalajara (UdG) students fed up at the escalating crime and violence in Jalisco.
Torres’ outline of the case went like this: The three students were abducted after shooting a short film in a house in Tonala that was under surveillance by members of a CJNG cell. Unbeknownst to the trio, the property had previously served as a safe house for a rival cartel, known as La Nueva Plaza. However, it had since passed into the hands of an aunt of one of the students, who allegedly used it as a brothel. Investigators said the students, who borrowed the property to shoot their film, had no knowledge of any illicit activities that had taken place there.
After they had finished filming their project, the students left in a car but were apprehended a short time later by six heavily armed men riding in two pick ups and claiming to be cops.
Investigators said the students were taken to a house in Tonala and interrogated for information on the whereabouts of the leader of La Nueva Plaza. After Aceves Gastelum was beaten so badly that he died, investigators surmise that the cartel members decided to kill the other two students and dispose of their bodies. Their corpses were taken to another house in Tonala where they were dissolved in vats of acid. Other victims of the cartel almost certainly suffered the same fate at this property, Torres said.
According to Torres, traces of Aceves’ blood were found at the first property, while genetic evidence pertaining to two of the victims was collected at the second house.
The revelations did little to quell the ire of students in Guadalajara. A vigil was convened outside the Casa Jalisco official residence of the state governor Monday evening, and calls made for his resignation. Other large demonstrations were held on subsequent days.
Not everyone was buying the FGE’s findings, and some skeptics called for an independent investigation. César Pérez Verónica, director of the Centro de Justicia para la Paz y el Desarrollo (Cepad), said the official version of events seemed “confused,” and that many details needed clarifying. He alluded to the case of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training school who went missing in September 2014. The initial findings of authorities later proved to be inaccurate, Pérez said, and subsequent investigations discredited their initial theories.
Jesús Medina Varela, president of the UdG student body, the Federation of University Students (FEU), said the FGE report left “many doubts” and that students would “not tire” of taking to the streets for further protests.
Sandoval said he understood the students’ anger but insisted he would not resign and see out his six-year term. He said the investigation was “solid” and based on more than 400 police interviews.
Outrage over the murders of the students erupted on social media Tuesday. Oscar-winning film director Guillermo del Toro, a native of Guadalajara, tweeted that “words are not enough to understand the dimension of this craziness … the ‘why’ is unthinkable, the ‘how’ is terrifying.”