Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro

Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro Escápite (born January 19, 1942 , † April 20, 2012 in Mexico City ) was a Mexican brigadier general .

Military training

Acosta joined the Mexican Army in 1963 . He attended the Escuela de Paracaidistas and made paratrooper training . Acosta was educated at SOA Fort Benning , Georgia and Fort Bragg, North Carolina between 1969 and 1971 . In 1964, like Francisco Humberto Quirós Hermosillo, he joined the Sección Segunda del Estado Mayor Presidencial , a military intelligence service. From this they were delegated to the Dirección Federal de Seguridad a department of the Secretaria Publico (Ministry of Justice).

Brigada Blanca

As an asymmetrical warfare , the Mexican government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez founded the Brigada Blanca in 1972 , which operated in Guerrero, Sinaloa , Chihuahua , Nuevo León , Jalisco , Puebla and Morelos . Well-known members were Miguel Nazar Haro, José Salomon Tanús (DFS), Francisco Sahagún Vaca (Policía y Tránsito del Distrito Federal), Acosta and his superior Quirós as Director de la Policía Judicial Militar . In June 1976, the government called Luis Echeverría the Brigada Blanca as Brigada Especial , which was commanded by Colonel Francisco Quiróz Hermosillo, Capitán Luis de la Barreda Moreno and Miguel Nazar Haro. It consisted of 240 members, including the military, personnel of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and Policía Judicial Federal , with the official mandate to determine the whereabouts of the members of the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre by all means . From 1976 this unit also murdered in the Valley of Mexico.

Kidnapping Special Commission

On May 30, 1974 at 9:00 am, the PRI candidate for governorship for Guerrero , Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, his cousin Febronio Díaz Figueroa, his private secretary Gloria Britos, and two uncles of Lucio Cabañas Barrientos , Luis and Pascual Cabañas took the guerrilla Partido de los Pobres (PDLP) and were abducted.

Acosta came to Guerrero as a member of a special commission that had been set up with Quirós as superior in the context of this kidnapping. According to retired Major Elías Alcaraz, the group was liberated on September 8, 1974, after a 15-minute shootout at La Pascua near Zacualpan in Atoyac de Alvarez, 10 kilometers off the road. Febronio Díaz Figueroa and Luis Cabañas were injured in the exchange of fire, Luis Cabañas later died as a result of the injuries. A ransom of 50 million Mexican pesos had been paid for the group , 25 million were returned by Sergio Méndez Arceo to the relatives of Figueroa after the liberation, the other 25 million pesos were assigned to Acosta. When Rubén Figueroa Figueroa was governor from 1975 to 1981 , Acosta was head of the Policía Judicial at Pié de la Cuesta and then head of the Policia Judicial of the State of Guerrero.

Funeral flights

In the fight against the Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria (ACNR) and the Partido de los Pobres (PDLP) were in the 1970s under the command of Francisco Qirós Hermosillo and Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro on the Base Aérea Militar Pie de la Cuesta de Acapulco , in Guerrero , Women and men who had been identified as guerrillas, to Desaparecidos , d. i.e., they disappeared. Capitán Francisco Javier Barquin Alonso registered the people who were brought to the Base Aérea Militar de Pie de la Cuesta . They were placed on a wooden chair or metal bench and told that a souvenir photo would be taken. Many of these people were murdered by Acosta on the orders of Quirós with a 38 caliber pistol . Their corpses were put in sacks, weighted down with stones and loaded onto an IAI Arava aircraft with the 2005 registration number of 301 Escuadrón. Per flight, 12 to 16 bodies were thrown into the Pacific at night 200 miles off the coast of Acapulco . For the period from 1975 to 1979, 143 cases of those who disappeared in this way were recorded.

Air smuggling

In the 1970s, Acosta ran an air freight company for smuggled goods at the Pie de la Cuesta military airfield in Guerrero . About the Base Aérea Militar No. 14 in Monterrey , Nuevo León state , marijuana was brought to Laredo, Texas . On the return flight, electrical appliances , firearms and ammunition were transported.

During a refueling stop in Monterey, security guards found the electrical appliances on the plane. The military commander of Monterrey, General Mercado, had the Arava unloaded and marijuana was found. The general reported this to the Ministry of Defense . Since the Defense Minister General Félix Galván López was taking part in a conference with Quirós in Argentina on the fight against subversive groups, General Rodolfo Reta Trigos, then head of the General Staff, decided to arrest the flight attendant, Major of the Infantry Francisco Javier Barquín Alonso. This was transferred to the prison of Campo Militar Número 1 in Mexico DF to open an investigation into arms and marijuana trafficking.

The pilot of the plane, captain of the army Manzano, explained when he was interrogated by General Mercado in Monterrey that there had been many journeys and that the plane was being loaded at the military base in Pie de la Cuesta in Acapulco, Guerrero. Héctor Bello and the director of the Policía Judicial del Estado (PJE), Isidro Chiro Galeana Abarca, regularly brought the marijuana here and took weapons and ammunition with them on the way back. The statement was communicated to General Reta Trigos, who reported to General Galván López upon his return. Quirós intervened with Galván and the latter ordered - in return for Quirós not being promoted - that no proceedings should be opened against Barquín. The captain of the army Manzano disappeared as a desaparecido.

Senator Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, whose right-hand man was Acosta, threatened journalist Manuel Buendía Tellezgirón. He was murdered on May 30, 1984 and the Procuraduría General de Justicia del Distrito Federal (DF Prosecutor's Office) was investigating one of the Acosta officials.

Acosta has been known to the FBI and DEA since 1992 as a suspected money launderer from drug deals for the minister of state in the government ministry, Mario Ruiz Massieu.

In the massacre of Aguas Blancas in Guerrero (Mexico) on June 28, 1995, 17 campesinos were murdered by soldiers in the presence of Acosta.

In 1995, Acosta brought his personal records to the General Staff Archives. He then published a 300-page volume on the Zapatista uprising in 1994 .

Generals Acosta and Quiróz were arrested on August 30, 2000. The allegation published at the time was that they belonged to the protection force of the cocaine gang Cártel de Juárez of Amado Carrillo Fuentes . The detention request was supported by evidence from the FBI . It can be assumed that the legal opinion prevailed that the murders from the 1970s were statute-barred.

On November 2, 2002, Acosta was sentenced to 15 years in prison for delitos contra la salud (offenses against health) and Quirós to 16 years in prison for delitos contra la salud and bribery . The process took place in camera. For the first time in the history of Mexico, two high-ranking military officials had been convicted by a military tribunal. For the desaparición forzada (forced disappearance) separate procedures took place that were not completed.

In the investigation into Desaparición forzada in June 2002, the ninth civil court of Mexico DF referred the case to the second court of the district of the first military zone. On October 2, 2002, arrest warrants were issued against Acosta, Quirós and the retired infantry major Francisco Javier Barquín Alonso. The investigation into Desaparición forzada was partly unconditional and investigated against those responsible in the former governments.

Francisco Quirós Hermosillo died on November 19, 2006 in the Central Militar Hospital in Mexico City .

On July 1, 2007, after 6 years and 10 months, Acosta left the prison of Campo Militar Número 1 in Mexico City, because a court had pronounced an amparo ( appeal judgment ) for procedural errors, which ended the desaparición forzada proceedings and Acosta his got all rights back.

In April 2008, Acosta retired after serving 45 years in the Mexican Army.

Publications

• Acosta Chaparro, Mario Arturo, Movimientos subversivos en México. México: Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de los Movimientos Armados, 1990.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ejecutan al general Acosta Chaparro. In: El Universal. April 21, 2012, Retrieved April 29, 2012 (Spanish). 
2. ↑ Laura Castellanos, Alejandro Jiménez Martín del Campo, México armado 1943-1981 , Era, 2007, 383 pp.
3. ↑ La Jornada , 7 de julio de 2008, El gobierno creó en 1976 brigada especial para “aplastar” a guerrilleros en el valle de México
4. ↑ La Jornada , 12 de agosto de 2002, El general procesado usaba aviones del Ejército para transportar drogas a Laredo
5. ↑ El Universal , 07 de noviembre de 2002, Yo vi cómo los mataban  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ^ Proceso , September 3, 2000, Las andanzas de Acosta Chaparro: de contrainsurgente a presunto narco
7. ↑ El Universal , 18 de marzo de 2001, Graves anomalías en la investigación  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ^ The New York Times , September 2, 2000, Mexico Imprisons Two Generals, Longtime Suspects in Drug Cases
9. ^ The New York Times , November 2, 2002, Mexico Convicts 2 Generals On Drug-Trafficking Charges
10. ↑ El Universal , 02 de noviembre de 2002, Son culpables Quirós y Acosta  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ El Universal , 15 de April de 2004, La sombra del ex general Acosta cobijó a Montiel  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ Indagan a dos ex titulares de la Sedena por genocidio. In: La Jornada. Retrieved May 6, 2005, April 26, 2009 (Spanish). 
13. ↑ La Jornada Guerrero , 30 de junio de 2007, Ex guerrilleros condenan la liberación de Acosta Chaparro, El general estuvo 6 de 15 años en prisión ( Memento of the original from April 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ Se retira del servicio militar el general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparr. In: Milenio. April 28, 2008, archived from the original on April 10, 2009 ; Retrieved April 26, 2009 (Spanish).