Students backed with strong popular support have been leading major mobilizations in Mexico with the most recent uprisings fuelled by government corruption and endemic violence following the disappearance of 43 students.
On Sept. 26, students from the rural teachers’ vocational school of Ayotzinapa, about 100-km away from Iguala in the state of Guerrero, were reportedly massacred during a visit to Iguala to protest education reforms and raise funds.
Local police of Iguala, with the help of drug traffickers that controlled the region, took control of buses carrying the student teachers, known as normalistas.
The government crackdown has left six people dead, about 17 seriously injured, and 43 missing.
Last Thursday, on the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, protesters took to the streets. Marching in solidarity with the missing Ayotzinapa student teachers were students, indigenous community members, business people, workers, and others who have been demonstrating their concerns about the state of justice and rule of law in Mexico.
This past Saturday, sources from CNN reported that the head local police official was arrested in connection with the disappearance. Authorities said that César Nava González, the former deputy director of the police department in the town of Cocula—near Iguala—was allegedly involved with the round-up and handover by local authorities in relation to the 43 missing students.
The Iguala mayor at the time of the incident, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, has been held as the “probable mastermind” in the disappearance, according to CNN reports. Authorities reported that Abarca was charged with “six counts of aggravated homicide and one count of attempted homicide.”
In total, various sources stated at least 75 people have been arrested in connection with the 43 missing and 6 dead students.
Corruption, collusion
The mayor, Abarca, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, are accused of having links with the Guerreros Unidos group, who economically and politically control the region surrounding the city of about 130,000 inhabitants.
The group produces opium paste destined for the United States market. Federal officials have announced that the takeover of the region has relieved the local police forces of their public security duties.
On the day that the normalistas arrived in Iguala prior to their disappearance there was an event organized by Pineda.
The normalistas had a long-term dispute with former mayor Abarca and there were suspicions that the students would interrupt. Once Abarca and Pineda learned that the students were in the city, they commanded the police chief to deal with them.
The students attempted to leave Iguala by bus, commandeering three from a local company.
The police tried to halt the buses with a blockade, which reportedly failed.
Local police, with reinforcements from traffickers, brutally attacked the normalistas, according to multiple sources. Three students were left dead at the scene, one of them was recovered with a skinned face and eyes gouged out – mutilations indicative of trafficker involvement.
Incident not in isolation
Guerrero ranked first for the highest murder rates in 2012, tied with the bordering state of Chihuahua.
According to World Bank data from 2010, in rural areas of Mexico, 61 per cent of people lived below the national rural poverty line, over 15 million out of a rural population of about 25 million. Guerrero faces extreme poverty and violence, with systemic ties between politicians, the state, and organized crime groups.
This is not an isolated incident, according to Daniel Wilkinson, managing director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
This case is not the first time that police have been accused of attacking normalistas. In December 2011, two students were killed and the case remains unresolved, although accusations pointed to the local police.
Furthermore, rural vocational schools—representing an autonomous power, apart from the government and organized drug groups—have suffered several attacks against them over the last few decades.
These schools typically follow the line of revolutionary Marxism and socialist ideology. Created during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, these establishments seek to form rural teachers who are public, free, and will work with select children and families surviving in the most destitute areas of Mexico. Students are trained to become teachers under these major schools of this framework throughout rural southern Mexico.
Many of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa teachers’ college students were from rural indigenous communities.
Wilkinson said that there were many other documented cases of disappearances in Mexico during an interview report. One HRW report issued that out of 250 disappearances, 149 were found to be forced disappearances in various regions of the country that involved agents of the state.
In the past decade, more than 100,000 people have been killed and 27,000 have disappeared in Mexico.
The violent Sept. 26 episode occurred at a time when Mexico was already under the international spotlight following the murder of 22 civilians on June 30—allegedly drug dealers—by soldiers in Tlatlaya, next to the state of Guerrero.
Eight were arrested in relation to that case after a UN report said that it is necessary “to carry out a prompt and independent investigation into these deaths.”
In the week following the attack in Tlatlaya, a demonstration took place in Mexico City in honour of another student massacre at Tlatelolco in 1968. There remains no consensus about the number of students who died during the Tlatelolco episode. Various sources report up to a few hundred dead.
According to militant sources in Mexico, the buses taken by normalistas on Sept. 26 were intended to serve to bring them to this demonstration.
One week after the 43 students disappeared, mass grave sites were discovered containing 28 bodies that were removed and identified. Based on DNA analysis done by forensic scientists, the former governor of Guerrero, Ángel Aguirre, said that the bodies did match those of the missing students.
Since Aguirre’s announcement, mobilizations escalated. Aguirre has since stepped down from his position.
In the first weeks following the disappearance of the 43 students, the former governor had his house attacked by Molotov cocktails. Later the government palace of Chilpancingo, capital of Guerrero, was torched by protesters who demanded evidence about what happened to the students after the police clash near Iguala.
Prior to the major discovery of a mass grave site 10 miles away from the last place the students were witnessed, the investigation uncovered 11 clandestine graves containing 38 sets of human remains in the area surrounding Iguala. However, the evidence thus far suggests that the bodies there are not those of the missing students.
Various sources reported that members of the Guerreros Unidos who remained in custody led the investigators to another nearby site on Oct. 27 that they claimed contained the remains of the missing students.
The missing students’ relatives were told that authorities were led to six bags of human remains in the area where students reportedly vanished. The relatives remain skeptical of the evidence and have been critical about the entire process.
The findings are under continued investigation.
One report from HRW states that Mexico should ensure that the investigation is “impartial and effective, and properly considers evidence of wrongful state action.”
Outrage for evidence
On Nov. 7 at a news conference, the attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, who is responsible for leading the investigation, said the students were captured by the municipal police of Iguala and delivered to the Guerrero Unidos group.
Murillo responded to questions on the case for about an hour before making the remark, “Ya me canse,” or “Enough, I’m tired.”
The prosecutor’s Spanish remarks became the rallying call at the originally peaceful marches in Mexico City. On Nov. 8, the protests over the 43 missing people turned violent at the National Palace.
In response to the statements of the prosecutor, students have set fire to police cars in various parts of the country, broken the windows of government building, and tried to enter the National Palace in Mexico City by breaking down the door. Their attention turned to Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto.
The walls of the palace were tagged using graffiti with the phrase “nós os queremos vivos”—translated to “we want to live”—in reference to the 43 students.
Based on recorded testimony, various sources report that at least two or more members of the Guerrero Unidos group admitted that the police handed off the students to their group. The group reportedly transported the missing students to a landfill in dump trucks, killed them, and disposed of their remains near the town of Cocula.
About 15 students died on the way to the landfill site due to asphyxiation. Others were shot dead before all of the detained bodies were incinerated in a fire built with wood and tires. The fire burned for hours, extending until the next day. In the end, the bodies were broken down and placed in trash bags.
According to various media outlets, the prosecutor said that body bags were found and the remains were being analyzed. Sources reported up to six bags found. Authorities stated it had not been possible to perform DNA testing on the remains, meaning that the case is not closed. Murillo said that due to the extent of incineration and the limited recovery of physical remains, the charred evidence would be difficult to identify.
A team of Argentine forensic experts were on the scene, reporting that none of the remains matched the 43 students’ identifications.
On Nov. 14, the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the “complex and ongoing” investigation into the 43 missing students.
The OHCHR spokesperson, Rupert Colville, said staff from the Mexico Human Rights Office deployed to visit the graves and landfill sites, emphasizing the importance of waiting for complete forensic analysis from independent experts as a better means of determination.
The United Nations commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, and the deputy foreign minister for multilateral affairs and human rights, Juan Manuel Gómez Robeldo, had a serious discussion last week about the importance of discovering the truth. Colville noted that “there are deep concerns about the case both nationally and internationally.”
Outrage has sparked over state-backed violence, with the protesters claiming that the acts have become increasingly radicalized. The past couple of months of searching in Mexico have uncovered clandestine graves in the context of nearly 22,000 missing people.
“These are the worst atrocities we’ve seen in Mexico in years, but they are hardly isolated incidents,” said José Miguel Vivanco, director at HRW.
“Instead, these killings and forced disappearances reflect a much broader pattern of abuse and are largely the consequence of the longstanding failure of Mexican authorities to address the problem.”
On Nov. 22 during a press conference, CNN reported, Mexico’s president, speaking of the protests, “condemned the violence, but said the demands were legitimate.”
“Society rightly is tired of feeling violated; [and] is tired of impunity and crimes,” said Peña Nieto.
