COMMUNITIES SERVED BY SMA:
COLORADAS DE LA VIRGEN :
Report from Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission

State Human Rights Commission
Calle Décima y Mina No. 1000, Colonia Centro
Apartado Postal 1354
Chihuahua, Chihuahua C.P. 31000
Tel and Fax: 410-08-28 with five lines
Toll-free number 01-800-201-1758

File No. HP/DJ/31/03
Communiqué no. DJ/58/03
Hidalgo de Parral, Chihuahua,
June 19, 2003-08-12
Recommendation no. 20/2003
Reporting Visitor: Licenciado Dover Jesús Soto Rascón
Licenciado Ismael Torres Simental
Under Attorney General
Southern Region

In accordance with the provisions of Articles 1, 3, 6 Fraction II, Article A, Fraction III, 15 Fraction I, 40 and 42 of the Law of the State Human Rights Commission and considering the file relating to the complaint brought by Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López and Domingo Rivas Castillo [sic] to be properly completed, this state agency proceeds to resolve in conformity with the elements of belief which work in the same, in the following manner:

FACTS:

FIRST: That on the 8th of April of this year, in a visit made by the visitors of this State Human Rights Commission to the Center for Social Readaptation in this town, appeared Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López and Domingo Rivas Castillo [sic], saying that “it is their desire to solicit our intervention because they consider their arrests to have been unjust.[”] The State Judicial Police on March 29 between eight and nine in the morning arrived at the home of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] in three trucks, there were between eight and ten agents, that on that occasion Domingo Rivas Carrillo was found in the home, the agents entered the house and arrested them without explaining to them the reason for the arrest, the information later appearing in which it is mentioned that they were arrested at the foot of a mountain and that they tried to flee into the trees where they were overtaken and that they were found to be in possession of two firearms, known as cuernos de chivo, and marijuana seeds, crimes for which they are being held, all that is said in the report being false. Isidro also mentions that he belongs to Consejo EcoRegional Sierra Tarahumara A.C. and is the Indigenous Coordinator of Coloradas de la Virgen and has struggled for years against the caciques who exploit the forests and believes that because of his struggles and for defending his community he was arrested and that the gun and the marijuana seeds were planted on him in the Police Report but that it did not happen the way they said it did and that they were unjustly arrested.

SECOND: When the Police Reports had been solicited, the Licenciado Ismael Torres Simental, Under Attorney General for the Southern Region, in communiqué no. 3350/03, dated April 28, states that: “On March 30 of this year, Omar Solórzano Muñiz, Chief of the Orion Group, put at the disposition of the Agent of the Federal Attorney General, the arrested person Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López, allegedly guilty of the crime of illegal possession of a firearm for exclusive use of the Army and Armed Forces of Mexico.[”]
On the same date, Omar Solórzano Muñiz, Leader of the Group of the State Judicial Police of the Group Orion, also brought to the Agent of the Federal Attorney General, the following firearms:

• An AK-47, caliber 7.62x39, serial no. 13917, with its magazine and twenty usable cartridges.
• A pistol, caliber 38 super, trademark Llama, serial no. 88178, with its magazine and four usable cartridges.
• An AK-47, caliber 7.62x39, trademark NORINCO, serial no. 004591, with six usable cartridges.
• A 9 mm. pistol, trademark Browning, serial no. 134PM65730, with its magazine and eight usable cartridges.

A transparent plastic bag, containing inside it a seed which appears to be marijuana, with a weight of approximately two hundred and fifty grams, was also put at the disposition of the Ministerial Authority of the Federation.

I enclose the following information on the date, March 29 of this year, made by. Socorro Rivas Ozaeta, Félix Jesús, Alarcón Jáquez and Jesús Manuel Paniagua A., agents of the state judicial police, in which are stated the reasons for which the arrests of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López and Domingo Rivas Carrillo were carried out, referring moreover in the last paragraph of the report that on the 12th of December of last year, two members of the community of Coloradas de la Virgen, municipio of Guadalupe y Calvo, were arrested, and were arraigned for the crime of illegal possession of firearms for the exclusive use of the Army and Armed Forces of Mexico, those persons being José Trinidad Valdenegro [sic] López, brother of the plaintiff, Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López, and Gabriel Palma López, a cousin of his.

EVIDENCE:

1. Declaration of the GLORIA TORRES MOLINA, on April 15 before the visitor of the State Commission of Human Rights in which was produced the following: “That the witness is the wife of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] and that on the day on which the events occurred, her daughter entered the house where she was, that is to say the patio of the house, and said to her, here come the judicials and they were beginning to have breakfast, Isidro, a compañero by the name of Fidel Torres Molina and his wife, María López Valdenegro, and their two daughters, Alberta Torres López and Alejandra with the same last names. That her daughter Maximina was the one who told them that the judicials were coming and they arrived in three trucks and were approximately nine agents and a guide who came with them. That they came into the house without permission without saying anything to them only asking them where were the arms and they entered and searched the whole house and took Isidro out to the patio and there they searched him together with Domingo Rivas Carrillo and then they put Isidro in the truck and then Domingo and that on neither of them did they find anything not arms nor marijuana seeds like the judicial police said later. When they searched everything, they even turned over the mattresses. That this is all that the witness saw because she was inside the house and the judicials did not let her leave. That the police took the women aside to another room where they tried to search the witness but she did not let them and that later she could see the truck with the judicials that was carrying Isidro stopped in a little arroyo in a house near where she lives and they said something to Isidro but she could not hear what it was about and from there they were taken away.”
2. On the same date and before the same functionary of this agency, testified MAXIMINA CARRILLO TORRES: “the daughter of the señora GLORIA TORRES MOLINA. The day of the events the witness was in the house of Isidro in Coloradas de la Virgen, in the patio when she saw the State Judicial Police arrive in three white trucks, identifying them by their black uniform, that two of those agents came into the house without permission and that she stayed outside on the patio but later could see what was happening that they took Isidro out of the house together with Domingo Rivas who was talking with him and then they took them away, that the witness did not see what happened inside the house because she stayed outside and they did not let her enter now that the judicials did not allow those who were inside to come out or those outside to go in. That she is sure that they took nothing out of the house, that it is not true that Isidro and Domingo had any firearms or marijuana seeds. That the witness was with a girl and that the judicials said that they were hiding something and tried to search them but the witness and the other girl did not let them. From there they took Isidro and Domingo away. That this is all she testifies to because it is what she saw.”
3. That same time, appeared HILARIO QUIÑONEZ RUBIO who testified that: “the day of the events, which was the 29th of March, the witness was in his house which is next to that of Isidro and from there he could see that Isidro was talking with some agents of the judicial police who he identified by the uniforms they wore some black and others spotted and he also saw when they put Isidro and Hermenegildo into the trucks, Hermenegildo is also known as Domingo Rivas Carrillo and they were taken away under arrest. That when the people from the judicials saw him they hurried to the witness’s house too and went in without asking permission or any written order from anyone and turned the house upside down asking him where were the arms and the witness replied and although he is the police chief of Coloradas he has no arms and from there they took him to the house of Rivas and they went in there too and searched everything, that they put him, too, in the truck but later on they let him out and only took away Isidro and Rivas and he did not see if they had gotten arms or drugs or any other thing from them.”
4. On the 22 of April, C. MARIA LOPEZ PEREZ testified before this State Commission, and in the following said: “the day of the events, the witness was at the house of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] who is her compadre and was visiting and it would have been approximately six o’clock in the morning and they were going to make breakfast when three trucks full of judicial police arrived and stopped in front of the house and maybe three of them came in through the kitchen door without asking anyone’s permission and later they searched the witness, she said that this consisted of she herself pulling her clothing tight against her body but they did not touch her but they did touch the men, and that they asked them where were the arms but in that house there were no arms, that the agents searched the house, moving furniture and beds and that later he saw them take Isidro and Domingo as prisoners and he could see that they did not have any arms not even a knife.”
5. C. FIDEL TORRES MOLINA testified and said that: “the day those persons were arrested, he who is speaking was at Isidro’s house and it would have been more or less at six o’clock in the morning and because it was cold he was warming himself by a woodstove that was in the kitchen of the house of Isidro where he had gone to visit them since he is the brother of the Señora Gloria Torres Molina, Isidro’s wife and the witness and his wife arrived and meanwhile various agents of the judicial police entered the house where he was, he thinks they were from the judicials but he does not know them and that later two of them pointed their guns at him and told him not to move and one of them searched him without finding anything. That Isidro at that moment was about to eat when the police took him and the same police searched the whole house moving and throwing everything around even the blankets that they also searched his wife, Maria López Pérez, who was there. That he did not see that they found any arms on Isidro nor on anyone in the house as far as he knows and he states that Isidro did not carry arms. That he did not see that Isidro was carrying seeds of anything in his pockets. That at the end he saw them carrying away Isidro Valdenegro [sic] and Domingo Rivas under arrest that he wants to declare that the witnesses to all this are the witness, the wife of Isidro, Gloria Torres, Maximina Carrillo Torres, the wife of the witness, María López Pérez, and that Hilario Quiñónez lives nearby and saw that he went to the house of Isidro.”
6. A writing which was sent to this Visitor, by fax by C. GUADALUPE MONTOYA MERCADO, of the NGO Commission in Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights, A.C., on the 23 of April, containing the manuscript of the complaint of the Señores ISIDRO VALDENEGRO [sic] LOPEZ and HERMENEGILDO RIVAS CASTILLO [sic] (known as Domingo Rivas Carrillo) wherein is reproduced their complaint against the agents of the State Judicial Police in the following manner: “I report on what happened the 29 of March when three white trucks arrived and in the trucks were between nine or ten agents of the State Judicial Police P.J.E. I was on the patio of my house when the police came in a very violent manner some went into the house without asking permission one of them apparently the commander stayed on the patio where I was, asking me questions in person he asked me where was my .22 rifle that I carried I told him that I did not carry any kind of arm, the police called me to another place farther away, some fifty meters from the patio of my house, asking me more questions like these: who are the persons who stopped the trucks that went from Pericos full of timber in Barborigame and the commander tells me, the truck drivers are accusing you because you are invading their work and wasting their time, I told him: I did not participate in this movement because I was in Chihuahua doing something but there are a lot of us who are not in agreement with them taking our wood, I also told him, what I was doing was notifying the workers supposedly contracted that there was a resolution in the Agrarian Court in favor of the plaintiffs and therefore they cannot take out not one foot of wood documented since the 17 of March, leaving them a copy of the resolution. Then the police said to me, do you know of a meeting that is going on in Pericos, one would think that you should be there, I told him nothing, the police says to me, you have an appointment in Baborigame next Tuesday, so you might as well go with us so you don’t have to go later on foot, they told me, get into the truck but once I was in the truck they put handcuffs on me without saying anything more to me the same way they arrested my neighbor Hermenegildo Rivas Carrillo, known as Domingo Rivas Carrillo, I did not want to argue with them because they were very tough, what I did ask them was if they would give me the chance to change my clothes and put on some shoes because I was wearing some plastic sandals but they told me that I couldn’t, they did not even let us eat breakfast, that’s how it was, and they took us to Baborigame and there they gave us lunch in the afternoon, they treated us worse than murderers and delinquents, I told them to take off the handcuffs because I was sick but they just told me we were there as prisoners and couldn’t take off the cuffs, later we were taken to the city of Parral, Sunday at dawn, where things were very different because now they did not even mention the truckdrivers who had accused me they just told me you are the leader of that community because you permit the people to go around armed, I answered them; aside from the fact that I don’t see people going around armed, I am no authority, for that there is a police commissioner and the traditional governor that was sunday in the afternoon they called the media according to them and they made us up pick up some arms that we had never seen before, they made me pick up a long gun that they called a cuerno de chivo and a pistol which I don’t know what kind it was and also a plastic bag with what according to them were marijuana seeds, when they gave me those things, I told them, I don’t have to pick them up but the one who appeared to be the chief got very angry and in a loud voice he told me, pick it up because here you do as I say and not what you want. That was how they made us pick up the arms to take the photos of us for the media. Later on they took us to the preventative jail where we stayed until Tuesday without anyone paying any attention as to whether or not we’d been fed, what is certain is that they did not even give us water, treating us like the worst criminals, moving us in handcuffs and shackled together, that is all the information.”
7. Documents presented to the visitor of the State Human Rights Commission in the City of Chihuahua, Lic. Armando González B. of the testimony of the Señores Hilario Quiñónez Rubio, Maximina Carrillo Torres, and Gloria Torres Molina, in which they tell their version of the facts as they did in their testimony referred to in evidence nos. 3, 2, and 1, respectively
8. The Police Report, dated the 29th of March of this year, made by the agents of the State Judicial Police, Socorro Rivas Ozaeta, Félix Jesús Alarcón Jácquez, and Jesús Manuel Paniagua, led by C. Omar Solórzano Muñiz, chief of the group of the State Judicial Police, in which they state that: “being approximately fifteen hours on the 29th of March of this year, we were patrolling the community of Coloradas de la Virgen, municipal section of Baborigame, municipio of Guadalupe y Calvo, because we had received reports that in this pueblo there were continual tesgüinadas with excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages which brought about acts of violence, moreover that on previous occasions, they had arrested persons armed with high-caliber weapons, and that while they were walking around, they observed that at the foot of a mountain there were various Tarahumaras, and on approaching them, two persons of the masculine sex began to walk towards the trees, to hide themselves among the trees, we caught up with them and saw that on their shoulders they were each carrying a firearm, and so we identified ourselves as agents of the State Judicial Police, proceeding to take away the firearms which they carried on their backs and upon conducting a physical search of both persons we found on each one of them, stuck in their belts and hidden under their shirts, a pistol which we took away immediately, and on one of them we found in the front right pants pocket a plastic bag which contained a dry, green seed which appeared to be marijuana, mentioning that one of the guns did not have its magazine, but carried a cartridge loaded in the chamber and the person who carried it carried in his left front pants pocket five usable cartridges, caliber 7.62 x 39.
   
   On interviewing each one of them, one said he was named Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López, thirty-seven years old, of Coloradas de las Virgenes [sic], municipio of Guadalupe y Calvo, who informed us that he is the adviser to the indigenous community of Baborigame in matters related to the welfare of the community and moreover works with the NGO, Consejo EcoRegional Sierra Tarahumara A.C., which has its offices in Chihuahua City and support him economically. From this person were taken the following firearms: an AK-47, trademark Norinco, caliber 7.62 x 39, serial no. 13917, with its magazine and twenty usable cartridges, as well as a pistol, caliber .38 super, trademark Llama, serial no. 88178, with its magazine and four usable cartridges, this being the person on which the apparent marijuana seeds were found, who told us that he used the firearms for his own personal protection and that he wanted the seeds to sow, and that it being fifteen-thirty on the 29th of March of this year, he was informed that he was under arrest for the offense of illegal possession of firearms for the exclusive use of the Army and Armed Forces of Mexico.
   
   It is also stated that on the 12th of December of last year, two members of the same community were arrested and indicted for the offense of illegal possession of firearms for the exclusive use of the Army and Armed Forces of Mexico, these persons being José Trinidad Valdenegro [sic] López, brother of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López who was arrested today, from whom was taken a Valmet gun, caliber 7.62 x 39, with an illegible registration no., with its magazine and nineteen usable cartridges and one more in the chamber, and Gabriel Palma López, cousin of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López who was arrested today, from whom was taken an AK-47, caliber 7.62 x 39, trademark Norinco, with registration no. MAK900504128.”
9. Communiqué no. 1132 sent by Group Leader of the State Judicial Police of the Orion Group, Omar Solórzano Muñiz, to the Agent of the Federal State’s Attorney on the 30th of March of 2003, charging Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López with the offenses of illegal possession of firearms for exclusive use of the Army and Armed Forces of Mexico and against health and Domingo Rivas Carrillo as charged with the offense of possession of firearms for exclusive use of the Army and Armed Forces of Mexico, also handing over two AK-47s, trademark Norinco, and two pistols, one a .38 caliber super and the other 9 mm, along with a transparent plastic bag containing “a seed which appears to be marijuana, with a weight of approximately two hundred and fifty grams.”
10. Writ of the judicial situation, dictated on the 7th of April of 2003, by C. Licenciado Alfredo Fernández González, First Criminal Judge of the Judical District of Hidalgo in which is ordered the formal imprisonment of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López and Domingo Rivas Carrillo for the offenses of which they are accused.

CONSIDERATIONS:

FIRST: This state entity is competent to investigate and resolve in the matter at hand, in the terms set out in Article 102, section B of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico, in relation with Articles 1, 3, 6, Fraction II, Section A of the Law in question, as well as numbers 78, 79, and 80 of the Internal Regulation of the entity itself.

SECOND: That having analyzed the evidence contained in this file, and having evaluated it in accordance with the principles of logic and experience, and in this case of legality, have arrived at the conviction concerning the material facts of the complaint as reasoned in the current chapter.

THIRD: The report of the agents of the State Judicial Police (evidence no. 8) contains a narration of the facts which are contradicted by the suspects and the eyewitnesses who were in the place where the events took place and who made statements as to how they took place, namely Gloria Torres Molina, wife of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] states to this Commission that after the agents of the police came into their house and searched the whole house and took away Isidro and Domingo Rivas… “and on neither one of them did they find anything, not arms, not marijuana seeds the way the judicial police said afterwards” (evidence no. 1).

Maximina Carrillo Torres, in what followed, said that, “she states that from that house they took nothing, that it is not true that Isidro and Domingto had any guns or marijuana seeds” (evidence no. 2).

For his part, Hilario Quiñónez Rubio stated that “he did not see if they took arms or drugs or anything else from Isidro and Rivas” (evidence no. 3). María López Pérez in her testimony states that in the house where the agents searched, “there was no arm and I could see that they (Isidro and Domingo) did not have or carry any arms, not even a knife” (evidence no. 4).

Fidel Torres Molina, who was visiting Isidro Valdenegro’s [sic] house, declared in what followed that, “He did not see them find any gun on Isidro. That he saw that he did not have marijuana seeds in his pockets, either.”

These versions are upheld when testified to in Chihuahua City before the State Human Rights Commission (evidence no. 7). The weight of the testimony found in this file allow us to affirm that with regard to the means of proof exhibited by the State Judicial Police it cannot be deduced that as Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López and Domingo Rivas Castillo [sic] have been arrested with the firearms that were the cause of the accusation within the criminal proceedings and as is affirmed in the corresponding Police Report, considering therefore the possibility that the facts contained in the cited Police Report might not be wholly true and in consequence might lead to prejudice against the fundamental rights of the arrested persons.

Moreover, the complaint, as we have already mentioned, contains allegations about the actions of the arresting agents that might constitute violations of the human rights of the arrested persons which occurred when they were being arrested and which are inconsistent with what the police said and the commission of those offenses referred to in the indictment; in effect, this file has sufficient evidenciary material to presume that the apprehension of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] López and Domingo Rivas Castillo [sic] did not take place in the manner related by the agents of the authority who mention that they found the suspects armed, in a forested area where, upon noticing the presence of the police, they fled among the trees, but that the agents of the authority entered illegally, searching the home of Isidro Valdenegro [sic] in the manner described by the witnesses: Gloria Torres Molina, Maximina Carrillo Torres, Hilario Quiñónez Rubio, María López Pérez, and Fidel Torres Molina (evidence nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7), which appear to us to be necessarily true because their depositions agree among themselves.

The activities of the police agents according to the testimony of the indicated witnesses could constitute violations of the right to privacy, among them searching the house and searching the persons and illegal entry to a home, according to the denotation which of these figures makes the manual for identifying acts which violate human rights, set out and edited by the National Human Rights Commission, violating in this way Article 16 of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico and 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

FOURTH: Therefore corresponding to the audit of Internal Affairs of the Attorney General, to know the present facts in accordance with that set forth. By article 9 bis of the Organic Law of the Public Ministry of the State and 21 of its Internal Regulation, for the reasons already set forth and founded. This state entity respectfully permits itself the following

RECOMMENDATION:

ONE: To you, Licenciado Ismael Torres Simental, Under Attorney General of the Southern Region, serves to make known of the Internal Affairs Audit, the facts contained in this Complaint as analyzed in the considerations of the same, so that this instance be in its case and before the corresponding procedings in which is taken into consideration the evidence already analyzed, resolve what corresponds to the law.

This Recommendation, in conformity with that set forth in Article 102, section B of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico, and 44 first paragraph of the Law of the State Commission of Human Rights, is made publicly and is published with the fundamental intention of making a declaration with respect to the iregular conduct of public servants in the exercise of their duties expressly conferred on them by the law, as well as obtaining the investigation that proceeds by part of the administrative agencies or whatever other competent authorities so that, within their capacities, they apply the proper sanctions and remedy the irregularities that were committed.

The Recommendations of the State Human Rights Commission do not attempt, in any way, to discredit the institutions nor to constitute an affront or damage to the same or their directors, to the contrary, they must be conceived as an indispensable instrument in democratic societies and law-abiding states to achieve their strengthening by means of the legitimacy which authorities and public servants, upon their fulfillment, acquire in the eyes of society. This legitimacy will be progressively strengthened every time they submit their actions to the judicial norms and criteria for justice required in terms of human rights.

In accordance with Article 44, second paragraph, of the Law of the State Human Rights Commission, I request to be informed as to the response to the acceptance of this Recommendation within fifteen working days of this notification.

Additionally, with the same basis in law, I request that we be informed as to the response to the acceptance of this Recommendation within fifteen working days of this notification.

Additionally, with the same basis in law, I request of you that the corresponding evidence to the fulfillment of the Recommendation be sent to this State Human Rights Commission within fifteen working days of the deadline for informion about the acceptance of the same.

The lack of presentation of the evidence will give place to the interpretation that the Recommendation was not accepted, which would leave the State Human Rights Commission at liberty to make this circumstance public.
I take the opportunity to repeat the assurances of my most attentive and distinguished consideration.

Attentively,

Lic. Oscar Francisco Yáñez Franco
President

cc: Lic. José Luis Armendáriz González, Technical Secretary of the CEDH
The Plaintiff
Lic. Ethel Garza Armendáriz, Director of the Office of Liaison with the State Attorney General’s Office