NCLAFF: Mirar morir: El ejercito en la noche de Iguala / Watching them die: the mexican army and the 43 disappeared

Mirar morir: El ejercito en la noche de Iguala. Dir. Coitza Crecko. 81min. 2016 (Mexico)

After the murder of 6 people and the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, on September 26, 2014, the Mexican government launched what it called the largest investigation in history. In another investigation, carried out by documentary filmmakers in this film, it is discovered that the objective of the work of the authorities is not to find the missing students, or identify the perpetrators, nor inquire into the networks of complicity that allowed the crime to be committed: it is in fact a damage control operation to prevent to anyone knowing how precisely it happened. In an event in which local criminals, municipal police and municipal politicians are involved, the state wanted to present what happened in Iguala as isolated, without ties to the past of the Dirty War and the proliferation of drug trafficking. An event without ties to politicians and corporations and state level federal forces. Among all this, it emphasizes what looks like the last red line of the Mexican State: protect the Army, keeping it beyond justice and the Constitution.

Winner of the 2016 LASA Film Festival.

With the Human Rights Center @FHI and the Spanish Language Program at Duke, and Mi Gente.