Mexico’s Department of the Interior reportedly revoked funding on Friday for a conference on the government’s violent anti-insurgency policy from the 1960s to the 1980s, raising claims of censorship.
The conference had been scheduled to begin in two days' time. Organizers said they were forced to cancel the event, which would have focused on the period known in Mexico as the “dirty war.”
The decision has caused confusion among academics, some of whom have accused the government of censoring debate about an infamously violent period of modern Mexican history.
The event, hosted by the Colegio de Mexico, would have included presentations from historians from the United Kingdom to Argentina, members of Mexico’s “dirty war” inquiry panel, and officials from the Department of the Interior itself.
Since 2021, government officials have been investigating historic crimes committed during the period when the government waged a campaign of violence against leftist guerillas, dissidents, and social movements in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Even decades later, over 2,300 victims of the dirty war or their relatives are thought to be alive today, many still searching for justice, investigators announced in their latest findings.
Read more here.
