The New Dark Age

For more information contact:
Kate Doyle – kadoyle@gwu.edu
Jess Franzblau – jblau@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, March 9, 2010 – The National Security Archive today posted a selection of U.S. and Mexican records containing evidence of human rights crimes committed during Mexico’s brutal “dirty war” against leftists in the 1970s.

The records are part of a petition filed yesterday before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) by a Mexican activist who was orphaned in infancy when her parents disappeared at the hands of government forces. Aleida Gallangos Vargas–whose case became widely known in 2004 when she tracked down her long-lost brother living in Washington, DC, through intelligence records found in Mexico’s national archives–joined with her paternal grandmother to charge the State with responsibility for the secret detention and disappearance in 1975 of her parents, Roberto Antonio Gallangos Cruz and Carmen Vargas Pérez, among other family members. Many of the documents used as evidence in the case were obtained by the National Security Archive through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and from the Mexican government.

By filing the case “Luz Alba Gorostiola Herrera and Quirina Cruz Calvo against the State of Mexico” before the IAHRC, Aleida Gallangos and her family underscore the failure of the Mexican government to bring the perpetrators of past human rights atrocities to justice. Mexico’s inability to resolve these cases has left survivors of the dirty war and families of the disappeared without legal recourse at the national level. The Inter-American system offers the last best hope for Mexicans seeking to find a measure of justice and truth about the country’s darkest period of state-sponsored violence.

Follow the link below for more information:

http://www.nsarchive.org

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THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.