A baby in the Cereso de San Miguel: the state mismanagement evidenced - Pie de Página

The State Prosecutor's Office took two weeks to obtain the identity of the minor's body found in the Cereso garbage: it was unearthed from a CDMX cemetery; there is already responsible, holds the authority

Text: Sam Nolasco/ SideB

Photo: Image Google Maps

PUEBLA.- The Social Reintegration Center (Cereso) of San Miguel in Puebla is a pressure cooker without an escape valve.

It has an overcrowding of 102.9 percent, according to information from the federal government. That is to say, more than twice as many inmates as it should contain live overcrowded there, and 62 percent have not been sentenced. Organizations that work with the prison population, such as Reinserta AC, even speak of self-government within the prison.

In a statement that they spread on social networks on January 13, they assure that everything is organized within its perimeter: From prostitution services, with the entry of sex workers; manufacture and consumption of narcotics, and even a betting system; in which fighting dogs enter the prison and leave as inert bodies discarded in garbage bags.

A few days ago, the e-consultation portal released videos that show the reality of self-government inside the prison, with people using cell phones or consuming drugs.

The National Diagnosis of Penitentiary Supervision that the National Human Rights Commission released in 2019 (the most recent one of 2020 does not include information on the San Miguel prison) rates the prison with 6.6 out of 10 possible points and with a downward trend. Still inside the yellow traffic light, but about to turn red. A rating that has been decreasing in the last ten years.

“When you have these levels of overpopulation you are going to find many deficiencies in acting. Authority is totally exceeded if there are twice as many people as there should be; and the conditions are surely deplorable.” This is how José Pablo Balandra, coordinator of the Reinserta civil association that works with the prison system, spoke in an interview with LadoB.

A find that broke the soul of thousands

In that waste place where fighting dogs parade, whose bites are not enough to save their lives, a baby body was found on January 10, 2022. It was found by an inmate who collected pet bottles, although it is presumed that he could enter at least a couple of days before. It was necessary to wait twelve days, almost two weeks, since the news spread to know the origin of the newborn, and the name by which his parents knew him. And it was mainly the work of the Reinserta organization that allowed the identification.

“They just fired a chief of guards who was involved in issues of trafficking and prostitution of women and girls, obviously the body of a baby that has an incision [in the abdomen] to enter a prison is not [about] a regular visit. There are protocols for children to enter prisons, obviously in this case they were not followed.”

Niño Ayala Peralta, as it appears in the death certificate with folio 210164529 that journalists from the capital spread on social networks. He died on January 5 at the age of three months at the Iztacalco Pediatric Hospital (the media and networks also refer to him as Tadeo). The document lists as causes of death acute pulmonary hemorrhage, disseminated intravascular coagulation and septic shock.

How to open 7z files in pc? (Extracting 7Z Files) https://t.co/jAbdtmrND8

— Kor Mac Wed Jan 09 12:45:37 +0000 2019

His parents went until January 21 to the Puebla State Prosecutor's Office to identify the body of his son. They explained to Saskia Niño de Rivera, president of the Reinserta association, that “they were threatened when they saw that the body of her baby was no longer there” in the Iztapalapa Civil Pantheon, where they fired him in the grave one day after the death of she.

The activist's statement was confirmed by the Mexico City Prosecutor's Office. This institution sent its first information sheet to whom in the early hours of January 21; there he notified that the administrator of the San Nicolás Tolentino pantheon, of the Iztapalapa delegation of Mexico City, had made a complaint of a "probable illegal exhumation and disappearance of the body of a minor."

It was, finally, until January 22 that the Puebla Prosecutor's Office ruled: “the result obtained from the genetic test today is that there is a correspondence between the body of the minor found in the garbage container of the Puebla Penitentiary Center [ ..] the minor buried and later exhumed in Mexico City is the same”, reported the Attorney General of the State of Puebla, Gilberto Higuera Bernal.

The official mentioned that the Prosecutor's Office had knowledge of the body since January 10, and that after conducting interviews with prison officials they found the person responsible for putting him in jail, but without giving more details.

Days before, the only information that was available about the terrifying discovery was what was released and belatedly by the state governor, Miguel Barbosa Huerta, who was not unmoved by the fact, and who, on the contrary, threatened to silence those who provided coverage. and follow-up to the subject, giving one or another journalism lesson. “They are going to be silenced, it is going to be clarified,” he said in his conference on January 21, without giving more information about the paradigmatic fact.

“This fact exposes the weaknesses of the Mexican State and its institutions to guarantee the right to life and justice. It is a paradigmatic case because it shows us that the networks of macrocriminality in Puebla are still intact [by this] we refer to the criminal operators, but also to the networks of institutional corruption and the business world that benefits from it,” he commented for this medium. Juan Martín Pérez García, coordinator of Weaving Children's Networks.

Political interest above the best interests of children

At the time that some associations reacted to the issue of the Cereso baby in Puebla, another news related to a baby went viral. On January 17, the governor of Nuevo León and his wife showed off photos with a child that was not theirs and even the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) uploaded a letter to the permanent Chamber of Deputies to report on the investigations they would carry out. , and thus hold responsibilities to Governor Samuel and his wife Mariana. However, Niño Ayala Peralta was not so lucky.

This case, in which two states and two governments are involved, according to Juan Martín Pérez, is enough for a federal action, in addition to adding exponentially “an open secret of the self-government in the Cereso de San Miguel [however there is] a political calculation that they are making about the life of a baby and that political calculation is to take care between the rulers of Morena and the captured National Human Rights Commission.

In a swing of political courtesies between the human rights commissions, the CNDH withdrew on January 20 as an observer and protector of the universal rights of the baby who had been missing for 10 days (since his origin or identity was not known).

The Human Rights Commission of the State of Puebla (CDH) sent a letter (which was uploaded to social networks) demanding that the CNDH "refrain from hearing about the events that occurred in San Miguel"; This, after a first statement, on January 14, where the CNDH urged the Prosecutor's Office to carry out the investigation in accordance with the rights of the minor.

What is unfortunate, according to activists and organizations such as the Ignacio Ellacuría Human Rights Institute, is that the CNDH renounced its power to attract the investigation file, in which it is only responsible for notifying to ensure the right to truth and justice of the subject, since the State is the guarantor of protecting him even if he is dead.

This is how for twelve days Niño Ayala Peralta was denied the right to life and the right to non-discrimination. “They almost reduced it to a suitcase for transporting drugs and this comes from the leak of the prosecution and officials. It is not a suitcase to transport drugs, it is a victim who is suffering post-mortem discrimination”, concluded the coordinator of Tejiendo Redes Infancia.

*This work was originally published on LADO B, which is part of the Media Alliance of the Network of Journalists on Foot. Here you can consult the original.