“I am very sorry for what happened … BUT…”

Juan Carlos Miranda, writing in La Jornada on a celebration of a “pact” between the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (Business Leaders’ Council) and the country’s military leaders to “establish […] joint mechanisms for the promoting a culture of civil protection,  job sfor retired military personnel, detection of security “hot spots”, among other goals”, quotes the chairman of the National Chamber of Tourism and Service Industries as rejecting the demands of families of the missing normal school students to be allowed access to military installations in their search for the disappeared 43:

“I am very sorry for what happened but we will open all the country’s barracks just so they can see if those boys are there or not.  This goes to the bowels of Mexican society, and an intimate part of our being.  We cannot accept opening the barracks to anyone other than the military.”  

If it’s not scary enough that the head of a TOURISM chamber uses the “we” to mean him and the military (and not the parents of other citizens), then consider what Gerardo Gutierrez Candiani, President of the Business Leaders’ Council had to say:

… human rights are fundamental, but what is more important is that we are doing nothing more than defending criminals.  It often seems as if there is no one defending the people who just get by day to day.   Sometimes it seems there are very few standing up for the victims, and people working every day to defend the victimizers.

I can think of at least one political system in which the industrialists and military are working hand-in-glove, and in which any civilian oversight of the military is to be discouraged. Didn’t Mexico fight a war against those guy in the early 1940s?