MEXICO CITY (CN) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday announced the resignation of Human Rights Undersecretary and Ayotzinapa truth commission chairman Alejandro Encinas.
“We are very grateful for his support,” López Obrador said during his daily morning press conference in Mexico City. “He gave me his resignation and will participate in electoral activities. And I’ve already appointed a substitute.”
Financial Attorney General Arturo Medina will take Encinas’ place as human rights undersecretary in the Secretariat of the Interior.
Encinas will join the campaign team of former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be the candidate for the ruling Morena party in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections.
On Wednesday, Sheinbaum announced on X, formerly Twitter, that she had invited him “to support us in the process that is approaching and he gladly accepted.”
Encinas on Thursday posted his resignation letter on X with the following text: “My respect and gratitude to all the victims, families, social movements and organizations for the trust placed in my management. To the public officials of this undersecretariat, who with commitment and conviction invested in this project and put human rights above other matters. To my colleagues for always working as a team, and to President López Obrador for his trust and support.”
Encinas has been criticized for his handling of cases involving political prisoners and forcibly disappeared people, but most of all the case of the 43 disappeared students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in the southern state of Guerrero in 2014. In August 2022, he presented a new report on the tragedy based on previously unreleased text conversations. Months later, he said that most of those text messages had been invalidated.
Following that admission, attorneys for four military officers arrested in the case demanded his resignation, claiming that he fabricated the commission’s version of events to score political points.
Families of the victims rejected the latest version of Ayotzinapa events, which Encinas presented to them in late September. They said it closely resembled the previous administration’s debunked “historic truth” and accused the army of continuing to hinder the investigation.
Still, Centro Prodh, the human rights organization that manages media and legal issues for the families of the victims, lamented Encinas’ resignation, saying that he always acted with “commitment and a capacity for dialogue.”
“Even in disagreements, he built bridges to the plurality of the country and respected people’s dignity,” the group said in a post on X.
As for the Ayotzinapa case, the group said that “in the face of the disinformation that the president creates with his narrative against experts, former public servants and civil society, we reiterate that the case is not resolved and again point out that the army is still hiding relevant clarifying information.”
Security analysts focused on Encinas’ failure to close the Ayotzinapa case as his most enduring legacy from his time in the position. He did his part in what analyst Alberto Guerrero Baena called the “institutionalized lie” surrounding the case.
“His resignation is fraudulent, because [solving the Ayotzinapa case] was the one job he had in the administration and in the end he was unable to contain the pressure from the various groups involved,” he said.
Guerrero added that he “sees no signs of a solution” in the appointment of Medina to the position.
Security and political analyst David Saucedo said that Encinas’ time in the Secretariat of the Interior and the truth commission was likely a stepping stone in a broader political career.
“Encinas behaved in the same way as other civil servants in López Obrador’s security cabinet,” he said. “He used his position and level of media exposure to make the leap to other political projects that are more profitable for him.”
As with other developments in the case, his resignation represents another advance for the political class at the expense of Mexico’s ever-growing class of victims of state violence and inaction.
“Ayotzinapa joins the long list of massacres in Mexico that are unsolved,” he said. “In Mexico, justice gets altered so as not to affect political interests or projects.”
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