Sergio Banda Delgado was 25 years old when he was captured by Navy elements in the Purísima del Jardín neighborhood in Irapuato, Guanajuato, on November 9, 2018. He has not been heard from since. A few minutes passed by at 9 o’clock at night and he was at a street party when the naval elements stormed and arrested him along with a friend. The other young man was released three hours later. He reported being interrogated about his drug use and tortured in an unknown location. Sergio, however, was kept in custody. His mother, Cristina Delgado, has not stopped looking for him.
Two days after the disappearance, after filing a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office, the woman went to a group of sailors who were guarding the premises of a company. The commanding officer confirmed that an operation had taken place and that there had been arrests. He alleged that they went to the area to support the Army and that it was the military who protected the captured. She has had no further information on her son’s whereabouts. “They tell us that if they are investigating, that they send trades, that it is late,” he says, in an interview with Animal Politico.
The case of Banda Delgado is no exception. Animal Politico had access to the complaint files of three young people who were disappeared between October and November 2018 and whose relatives point to the Navy as responsible.
The first is Christian Giovanny Martínez Juárez, who disappeared in Salamanca, Guanajuato, on October 7, 2018. The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued on Thursday, August 5, recommendation 43VG/2021 in which it points to Semar and the state government as responsible. He presented screenshots of videos showing two pick-ups with the caption “Marina” and men in uniform capturing a young man trying to escape. A witness’ account and state police reports corroborate the allegation. Despite the evidence, the Navy denied responsibility for the incident and rejected the recommendation. In the same vein, the state government also announced that it will not accept the CNDH report.
The second missing person is Sergio Banda Delgado, who has been wanted since 9 November.
The third is Gabriel Mejia Estrada, whose family reported that elements of the Navy took him away on 25 November in Acámbaro.
None have been located, nor have there been any arrests, despite the fact that the accusations are clear against public officials.
These disappearances occurred during the first months of a special Navy operation to strengthen security in Guanajuato. The first elements arrived in late October in the state, transferred from Mexico City, and remained in the area until October 2019, when they were replaced by the National Guard. Their first two destinations were Salamanca and Apaseo el Alto, although they were later deployed in more territory. Its mission was to collaborate in the fight against huachicol, protect the Salamanca refinery and take charge of public security work at a time when homicides had skyrocketed in the state.
Animal Politico wanted to know the Navy’s version but it declined to comment.
So far, these disappearances have not been investigated as a single phenomenon but are treated as separate events. However, the context of 2018 cannot be ignored, a year in which complaints of human rights violations against the Navy multiplied. Between February and June, at least 47 people were missing in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. The CNDH pointed to Semar in its recommendation 36VG/2020 and the FGR opened 34 investigation folders. Currently only three of these have been prosecuted and 30 naval elements are in prison on charges of the enforced disappearance of four people.
Due to the complaints received for those events, the Navy withdrew most of its personnel from Nuevo Laredo. In June, 257 items were sent to the capital, where they were supposed to be investigated. Suspicions fall on the Special Operations Unit (UNOPES), an elite Navy group in charge of major operations against organized crime. In command of that division was at that time Admiral Marco Antonio Ortega Siu, who after the events of Nuevo Laredo was sent to another destination in Mexico City. Alfredo Reyes Mondragón, head of the mission in Tamaulipas, is currently in custody as he is one of the 30 sailors accused of enforced disappearance.
This data is relevant since the Special Operations Unit was also in Guanajuato at the end of 2018. This is reflecteddo in the 2018-2019 Labor Report, which mentions that the elite group was deployed in the state within the strategy developed by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador against huachicol. The report starts from December 2018 as that is when the current administration comes to power, although the deployment had begun a month earlier.
At the moment it is impossible to determine whether the officers responsible for the Disappearances in Guanajuato were also in Nuevo Laredo. The CNDH could not identify the 10 soldiers who were involved in the events, and the Navy did not provide information either.
The families also have no news since the events took place. The CNDH’s recommendation is a first step, but the fact that Semar and the state government have rejected it is a shot in the arm.
“Semar’s refusal to accept the recommendation on the grounds of presumption of innocence has the consequence of impunity for human rights violators. That the state government has announced that it will also reject it in the same logic what it demonstrates is the lack of commitment of Governor Diego Sinhué Rodríguez Vallejo to human rights in Guanajuato and a new cover-up to the FSPE of Álvar Cabeza de Vaca, whose Tactical Operational Group has been criminally denounced for extrajudicial executions and for abuse of authority,” said Raymundo Sandoval, researcher and member of the Platform for Peace and Justice in Guanajuato.
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