Mass grave found in Mexico believed to be students murdered by police officers

waltky · Nov 6, 2014

Are they gettin' fed up an' not gonna take it any more?...

Mexico's missing students: Will case prove a tipping point?
November 6, 2014 ~ The disappearance of 43 college students in September has reverberated deeply in Mexico, bringing together disparate protest movements and raising hopes that leaders will finally have to address the ongoing corruption and impunity it exposes.

The number 43 is cropping up across Mexico City these days: Written large on banners near Revolution Plaza and scribbled small on posters advertising office space for rent. In a public park, one wall bears the graffiti message: It hurts 43 times. The signs all refer to the mass kidnapping in September of 43 students from a teachers college in the southern state of Guerrero. It is not the biggest or bloodiest crime in Mexicos recent history, but it has struck a national nerve. It has exposed alleged connections between local officials, police, and organized crime. And many here hope it can be a turning point for Mexico, which has struggled to address the corruption and impunity that grip the nation, even as President Enrique Peña Nieto tries to highlight its economic promise.

Since he took office, the international conversation about Mexico has changed markedly. From the start, Mr. Peña Nieto rallied politicians from rival parties to join a Pact for Mexico, enabling passage of landmark reforms including energy, education, and telecommunications. Homicides have fallen by 29 percent since 2012 according to government statistics, and after six years of headlines focused on beheadings and mass graves, suddenly the international media were heralding Mexicos Moment for development and economic growth.

But the students abduction in Iguala, about 120 miles south of Mexico City, after a run-in with local police has drawn back the curtain once again, exposing the continuing grip of corruption and insecurity. Politicians have started talking about the need for a renewed Pact for Mexico that focuses on security, and protests have taken place nationally over the past month. The demonstrations are bigger, broader-based, and more enduring than Mexico has seen in recent years, says Lorenzo Meyer, a political analyst at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Theres almost a sense of hope that this could lead to a real shift, says Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, who chairs the government department at the University of Texas Brownsville and focuses on organized crime. Could it actually be that this is Mexicos moment?

'The hope of Latin America'
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waltky · Nov 9, 2014

Granny says, "Dat's right - dey finally gettin' tired of it an' ain't gonna take it no more...

'Enough, I'm tired' comment rallies Mexico protest
Nov 8,`14 -- An off-the-cuff comment by the attorney general to cut off a news conference about the apparent killing of 43 missing college students has been taken up by protesters as a rallying cry against Mexico's corruption and drug trade-fueled violence.

During the session that was televised live Friday, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam announced that two suspects had led authorities to trash bags believed to contain the incinerated remains of the slain students, who haven't been seen since being led away by police in the southwestern town of Iguala on Sept. 26. After an hour of speaking, Murillo Karam abruptly signaled for an end to questions by turning away from reporters and saying, "Ya me canse" - a phrase meaning "Enough, I'm tired." Within hours, the phrase became a hashtag linking messages on Twitter and other social networks. It continued to trend globally Saturday and began to emerge in graffiti, in political cartoons and in video messages posted to YouTube. Many turned the phrase on the attorney general: "Enough, I'm tired of Murillo Karam," says one. Another asks: "If you're tired, why don't you resign?"

Other people used it to vent their frustrations with messages such as "Enough, I'm tired of living in a narco state" or "Enough, I'm tired of corrupt politicians." Mexicans have reacted with outrage to the disappearance of the students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state and a government response that has failed to fully explain what happened. On Saturday, protesters burned several cars and trucks outside the governor's offices in Chilpancingo, the Guerrero capital where demonstrations over the students' disappearance have escalated into violence several times. Investigators say Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, ordered police to confront the students, who had gone to Iguala to raise money and had commandeered passenger buses for their use. The couple reportedly feared the students would disrupt an event being led by the wife.

A group of 43 marchers, each representing one of the disappeared rural college students, parade through the streets, calling for people to gather at the city's main plaza, in Mexico City, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2014. Forty-three organizations arrived from the southern state of Guerrreo to take part in a rally Sunday, on what will be the 43rd day the young men of the Raul Isidro Burgos school went missing. Suspects in the disappearance of the 43 college students have confessed to loading the youths onto dump trucks, murdering them at a landfill, then burning the bodies and dumping the ashen remains into a river, Mexican authorities said Friday.

Iguala police fired on the students in two incidents, killing six people. Officers then allegedly turned over 43 arrested students to a local drug gang. Murillo Karam said members of the gang confessed to killing the students before burning their bodies and tossing the ashes and bone fragments into a river. At least 74 people have been arrested, including Abarca and his wife, who were found Tuesday hiding in a dilapidated home in a rough section of Mexico City. Families of the missing students insisted they will continue to believe their sons are alive until authorities prove the recovered remains are theirs. Murillo Karam said the bone fragments would be sent to a lab in Austria for testing.

Manuel Martinez, a spokesman for the families, said the "YaMeCanse" rallying cry was proof that their demand for answers is gaining strength. "The people are angered and I hope that they continue support us," he said Saturday. Filmmaker Natalia Beristain was among hundreds of people posting YouTube videos tagged (hash)YaMeCanse. "Senor Murillo Karam, I, too, am tired," she said. "I'm tired of vanished Mexicans, of the killing of women, of the dead, of the decapitated, of the bodies hanging from bridges, of broken families, of mothers without children, of children without fathers." "I am tired of the political class that has kidnapped my country, and of the class that corrupts, that lies, that kills," she added. "I, too, am tired."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/...a9.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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waltky · Nov 9, 2014

3 Guerrero Unidos drug gang-bangers confess to ghastly massacre of student teachers...

Three men confess to killing 43 Mexican students
Nov. 7, 2014 | The three men said the students were handed over to the Guerrero Unidos gang by local police.

Three alleged gang members on Friday confessed to killing 43 Mexican college students who disappeared in September. The missing students from Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa were en route to a protest when their bus was attacked by gunmen in Iguala on Sept. 26. Three students and three others were killed in the ambush.

Local police in Mexico.

The three men, Patricio Reyes Landa, Jhonatan Osorio Gomez and Agustin Garcia Reyes, allegedly told law enforcement the students were handed over to the Guerrero Unidos gang by local police. Fifteen of the students were already dead of asphyxia when they were brought to the gang, the rest were burned alive in a trash can, Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said. Forensic scientists were working to identify the victims from the burnt remains law enforcement found.

Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, were arrested Tuesday for allegedly masterminding the attack. According to Karam, the couple wanted to get rid of the students because they didn't want the students' protest to disrupt a planned political event hosted by Pineda in the town the same day. Dozens of other arrests had been made, including more than 20 local police.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...Mexican-students/8301415400862/?spt=sec&or=tn
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longknife · Nov 9, 2014

Mexico is settling into anarchy and a major reason for it are the drug cartels.

If there was no market for their goods, they wouldn't exist and present a threat to all Mexicans.

waltky · Nov 14, 2014

Protests to keep up pressure on Mexican gov't until students are found...

Parents of missing Mexican students cling to hope
Nov 14,`14 -- Maria Telumbre knows fire. She spends her days making tortillas over hot coals, and experience tells her a small goat takes at least four hours to cook. So she refuses to believe the government's explanation that gang thugs incinerated her son and 42 other missing college students in a giant pyre in less than a day, leaving almost nothing to identify the dead.

The discovery of charred teeth and bone fragments offer Telumbre no more proof of her son's death than the many graves unearthed in Guerrero state since the students disappeared Sept. 26. She simply does not accept that the ashes belong to her 19-year-old son and his classmates. "How is it possible that in 15 hours they burned so many boys, put them in a bag and threw them into the river?" Telumbre says. "This is impossible. As parents, we don't believe it's them."

For the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, the account, delivered by the attorney general and based on the confessions of detained gang members, begins to solve the mystery of the missing students. But for Telumbre, her husband, Clemente Rodriguez, and other parents, it is merely the latest lie from an administration that wants to quiet the poor and put this mess behind it. Their demands for the truth are fueling a pent-up national outrage at the government's inability to confront the brutality of drug cartels, corruption and impunity.

Maria Telumbre, center, walks with a poster emblazoned with the image of her missing 19-year-old son, to the Basilica of Guadalupe for a special Mass, in Mexico City. The discovery of charred teeth and bone fragments in plastic garbage bags offered Telumbre no more proof of her son's death than the many graves unearthed in Guerrero state since the students disappeared Sept. 26. Nor did it cause her 'enormous pain' as Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said it would, because she did not accept that the ashes belonged to her son and his classmates.

The Rodriguez family's chronicle of disbelief is rooted in collusion between Mexican officials and organized crime. The students of the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa were last seen in the custody of police in the city of Iguala, allegedly at the behest of the mayor. Soldiers and federal police didn't respond to the parents' urgent appeals for help. Federal officials waited 10 days before intervening. And when they did, parents say, authorities focused on finding graves rather than live students, so graves were all they found.

Telumbre and her husband say their beloved son, Christian Rodriguez Telumbre, is still alive, and they blame the government for failing to rescue him and his classmates. "They are hidden somewhere," insists Clemente Rodriguez. "I hope that they're going to let them go any day now."

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Missing student protests killing Mexico tourism
Fri, Nov 14, 2014 - VACATION NIGHTMARE: Tourist hotspot Acapulco is bracing for a crisis as rallies over 43 students presumed murdered devolved into chaos, scaring away visitors

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has tried to keep the issue of violence separate from his focus on the economy, but the two are converging as violent protests over 43 disappeared students squelch tourism in Acapulco just before a major holiday weekend. As Mexico prepares to commemorate its 1910 revolution on Monday, hotels in the Pacific resort city have seen a wave of cancelations after demonstrators temporarily shut down the airport, blocked highways and attacked government and political offices in the southern state of Guerrero. Acapulco hotel occupancy rates are currently at 20 percent, well short of the 85 percent expected for the long weekend when Mexicans typically flock to the beaches, Joaquin Badillo, president of the Employers’ Association for Guerrero state, said om Wednesday.

More cancelations have been registered for Christmas week, the busiest time of the year for the Acapulco tourism sector, and Badillo said one company that operates 10 hotels has cut about 200 temporary jobs in recent weeks. “Seasonal employment in tourism is really being hurt,” Badillo said. “We’re talking about cleaning workers, security, bartenders, barkers, transportation.” Acapulco’s beaches were semi-deserted on Wednesday, except for small groups of sunbathers in the city’s famous Gold Zone. The emblematic Papagayo, Condesa and Icacos beaches were all but empty. The Employers’ Association called for a six-month tax waiver to get local businesses through the crisis. “With that, employees would not lack for salary and the businesses can maintain themselves in good shape,” Badillo said.

In decades past, Acapulco was a favored playground of Hollywood movie stars and other international travelers. While the city’s luster has faded, it remains an important draw for domestic tourists. Organized crime’s influence has risen in recent years in both Acapulco and the rest of Guerrero State, accompanied by soaring rates of homicide, kidnapping and other violent crimes. As recently as three years ago, 180 cruise ships docked in the city. So far this year, just five have made port calls, according to statistics from local businesspeople. Security concerns have also affected other business sectors.

Activists of the Comuna organization perform a symbolic blockade of a pyramid at the archaeological site of Monte Alban in Oaxaca, Mexico, on Wednesday as they hold painted silhouettes representing 43 students thought to have been murdered by gangsters, but who are officially still missing. The banner reads: “Until they are found.”

Juvenal Becerra, head of a pharmacy trade association, cited a 20 percent downturn in pharmacy business statewide. That includes US$3.8 million in lost business over the past month just in the area around Iguala, where the 43 teachers’ college students disappeared on Sept. 26 following a police attack in which six people died. “In Iguala and the communities that surround it, some pharmacies have cut hours. They open later and close earlier,” Becerra said, adding that organized gangs “never stopped charging extortion or kidnapping or assaults, but since the students disappeared in September, clients leave home less often.”

Investigators say the students were rounded up by local police, turned over to a drug gang and apparently killed, with their corpses charred to ash and dumped into a river. Authorities have yet to confirm that any human remains found during the search for the youths belong to the students and officially they are still considered missing. On Oct. 17, tens of thousands of protesters marched in Acapulco. On Monday, they blocked the city’s airport for hours, carrying clubs, machetes and gasoline bombs.

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Professor Peabody · Nov 14, 2014

I wonder if Fast & Furious guns were used?

longknife · Nov 14, 2014

Things are getting very nasty down there right now.

They set fire to the door of the National Palace in Mexico City
They've marched on the state buildings in Guerrero, setting fires and general getting nasty.
Federales are being called out and one has to wonder how much further this is going to go.

Mexicans are getting fed up with government corruption and the continued killing of civilians and children.

Just how far is this going to go? {and how much is being back by the cartels in an effort to weaken the government?}

waltky · Nov 15, 2014

Teachers band together to protest Mexican gov't...

Protests in Mexico City could turn violent
Nov. 15, 2014 | A contingent of hundreds of teachers is protesting against the government in Mexico City Saturday.

The protesters are demanding that the government present alive 43 students from Guerrero state that have been missing, and are unofficially presumed dead, since September. Other demands include the repeal of President Enrique Peña Nieto's structural reforms -- particularly education reform -- and the impeachment or resignation of Peña and other high level government officials. The march has forced the closure of two main avenues that lead downtown, reported local newspaper Reforma. The teachers, affiliated to a teachers' union known as Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE), are also expected to carry out demonstrations at first lady Angelica Rivera's private residence in the rich west Mexico City neighborhood of Lomas de Chapultepec.

Residents of that neighborhood have been warned by community groups to avoid the protests and lock up their homes and businesses. "We recommend to people who live near or transit through that area to make preparations. Do not leave cars parked on the street and lock your homes and businesses," read a communique released by the Central Committee of the Jewish community in Mexico. The disappearance of the 43 students in Guerrero -- and the government's delayed and poorly received response -- have sparked unrest. Protesters have shut down major highways, burned Guerrero state capital Chilpancingo's main government building, shut down the Acapulco airport (also in Guerrero) and set fire to the front door of Mexico City's historical seat of national government, the National Palace.

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto arrives in Beijing to attend the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting and pay a state visit to China, November 10, 2014. The future risks faced by China's economy are not that scary and the government is confident it can head off the dangers, President Xi Jinping told global business leaders to dispel worries about the world's second-largest economy.

Further outrage was fanned with the president's trip to China for an APEC summit. Viewed by many as ill-timed because of the ongoing crisis, the trip also carried a negative historical connotation. On Oct. 2, 1968, while then-president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz was out of town, army, paramilitary and police forces opened fire on a student protest in Mexico City, killing at least 40 students and detaining thousands. Adding to Peña's troubles, a report by the Aristegui Noticias website uncovered that his family's private residence in Lomas de Chapultepec is worth nearly $7 million and is owned by Grupo Higa, a consortium that rented private jets and airplanes to his administration when he was a governor.

The government argued the house is being paid for by Rivera, who had a successful career as a soap opera actress before marrying Peña. The same group, allied with China Railway Construction, won a bid to build a high-speed rail line earlier this year. That bid was later discarded by the government after competing companies argued they had not been given a fair shot at the contract. The barrage of scandals has ignited calls for the president's resignation. Left-wing politicians and activists, including two-time presidential runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, have qualified the students' disappearance as a "state crime" and turned that demand into their rallying cry. The president's resignation is unlikely, as federal forces were not involved in the 43 students' disappearance and no Mexican president has resigned since Pascual Ortiz Rubio in 1932.

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waltky · Nov 16, 2014

Mayor Abarca goes to trial...

Mexico begins court proceeding for mayor
Nov 16,`14 -- A federal judge has opened a court proceeding against the former mayor of a southern Mexico city in crimes that preceded the case of 43 missing students from a teachers' college.

The Federal Judiciary Council said in a statement late Saturday that Jose Luis Abarca has been charged with organized crime, the kidnapping of seven people and the killing of another in crimes that occurred before the students disappeared. Abarca was mayor of Iguala, in Guerrero state, when the students went missing.

Abarca has been behind bars since he and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, were arrested Nov. 4 in a crowded Mexico City neighborhood.

The Attorney General's Office considers Abarca the mastermind behind six killings and the disappearance of another 43 people in Iguala on Sept. 26.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-16-15-40-45
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waltky · Nov 21, 2014

Mexicans in an uproar over 43 massacred student teachers...

Molotov cocktails, clashes as Mexico City braces for massacre protests
Thu Nov 20, 2014 - Masked demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails and shot fireworks at police near Mexico City's airport on Thursday as thousands prepared to protest President Enrique Pena Nieto's handling of the apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers.

Police in riot gear faced down around 300 protesters near the airport a few hours before three major marches were due to begin in support of the students apparently murdered after their abduction by corrupt police on the night of Sept. 26. No one was injured in the clashes, police said. The three marches in Mexico City were expected to start later on Thursday and converge on the central square, or Zocalo, on the 114th anniversary of the day the Mexican Revolution to overthrow dictator Porfirio Diaz began in 1910.

Mexico has been convulsed by a string of protests since the 43 students were taken from the southwestern city of Iguala by police working with a local drug gang and then very likely incinerated, according to the attorney general. Students and relatives of the missing were expected to be among the protesters, whose numbers were estimated in the thousands, said a spokeswoman for Mexico City police. A separate protest in the historic center of Mexico City saw around 650 students demonstrating peacefully earlier on Thursday, the spokeswoman added.

A masked demonstrator throws a petrol bomb towards riot police during a protest over the 43 missing Ayotzinapa students, near the Benito Juarez International airport in Mexico City

The government has been plunged into crisis by the violence in Iguala, where six people also died on the night in question. Exacerbating public discontent has been a scandal over a lucrative rail contract that personally embarrassed Pena Nieto. Earlier this month, the government abruptly canceled a $3.75 billion high-speed rail contract awarded to a consortium led by China Railway Construction Corp Ltd, partnered with a group of Mexican firms including one known as Grupo High.

It then emerged that a subsidiary of Grupo High owned a luxury house that Pena Nieto's wife, Angelica Rivera, was in the process of acquiring, raising questions about the tender and prompting her to announce on Tuesday that she would sell the stake. But the unapologetic tone of Rivera's announcement has prompted more anger in Mexico, especially as neither she nor her husband have explained why one of the winning team from the rail consortium was also the owner of the family's house.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014...J42JR20141120?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
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waltky · Nov 29, 2014

Mexican bus drivers caught in limbo...

Drivers stuck for weeks at Mexico teachers college
Nov 29,`14 -- The men are holed up with their buses on the college's soccer field, sleeping in the compartments that once held passenger luggage and hanging the clothes they've hand-washed from the windshields.

While attention has focused on the kidnapping and disappearance of 43 students from the Raul Isidro Burgos teachers college in Tixtla, few have paid much attention to the three dozen or more bus drivers who say they are being forced by activists from the school to live as captives and act as chauffeurs for the very people who commandeered their vehicles. The drivers, some of whom have been at the southern Mexico school more than a month, say they cannot abandon the buses because their companies hold them financially responsible for the vehicles, some of which are worth well over a hundred thousand dollars. And with authorities unwilling to inflame tensions over the disappearance and presumed massacre of students from the school, no one is coming to their rescue. "They say we aren't kidnapped because we can get out and walk around, or swim in the (campus) pool," said one driver who, like the others holed up at the school, refused to give his name for fear of angering the students. "But a prison inmate can also go out to the exercise yard or the gym, and that doesn't mean they're free."

The students, who have a long history of sometimes violent activism, have justified the mass bus seizure as "an expropriation" and say they need the vehicles to ferry them to and from the many protests that have erupted in Guerrero state since the Sept. 26 disappearance and likely killing of their colleagues. Omar Garcia, a second-year student at the school, acknowledged it has put the drivers in a bad spot, unable to leave or earn a living to feed their families. But he told The Associated Press the students had no other choice, since they don't know how to maintain the buses or drive such large vehicles. Drivers have begged their employers to send replacements so they can go home and see their families. So far most companies have refused, though Garcia said an agreement was in the works between the students and the bus owners that would allow drivers to rotate out every 10 days. Several bus companies with vehicles at the school declined to comment, except to acknowledge that they hold the drivers responsible for the vehicles as a matter of policy. The companies say hijackings have become such a frequent problem that some lines have cut back on runs through southern Guerrero state.

The plight of the drivers at the teachers college is just one example of the government's inability to keep the peace in Guerrero state since the students disappeared, allegedly on orders from a local mayor whose corrupt police handed them over to drug traffickers. Masked students also control toll booths to collect "donations" from motorists passing on the federal highway and hijack passenger buses for their own use. Protesters from a local teachers' union have burned vehicles, public buildings and the offices of political parties, all while federal and state police stood nearby. The disappearance of the students has ignited public outrage, with near-daily protests against a government blamed both directly and indirectly for their fate. Such tension has complicated any attempt to help the bus drivers. "The police ... are not taking action at this moment to avoid giving the appearance of acts of repression," said Guerrero state prosecutors' spokesman Jorge Valdez. "It is the concept of not trying to put out a fire by pouring more gasoline on it."

A bus leaves the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, where the 43 missing students attended, in the town of Tixtla de Guerrero, Mexico. While world attention has turned to the students of the rural teachers college in southern Mexico, almost no one has noticed the 30 or so bus drivers who say they are being forced to live as captives in order to act as chauffeurs for the activists who commandeered their vehicles. The men, some whove been at the school more than a month, say they cannot abandon the field because the bus companies hold them financially responsible for the vehicles worth tens of thousands of dollars. And with authorities unwilling to inflame tensions over the disappearance and presumed massacre of 43 students from the school, no one is coming to their rescue.

The state's new governor, a former leftist rebel himself, is "looking for a mechanism of conciliation, negotiation, persuasion - a political mechanism" to control the groups, Valdez said. Authorities also wish to avoid a repeat of an incident three years ago, when police shot and killed two young men from the school while trying to clear a student roadblock. A dozen officers were arrested and two of them charged. The soccer field has become a parking lot for not only the buses, but for seized delivery trucks that once held Coca-Cola and goods from milk, cheese and snack companies. The drivers said the students looted the goods and sold the merchandise to local vendors. One bus driver said he has been held since Oct. 24 when he was stopped while driving about a dozen passengers to Acapulco. A group of students blocked a road near Chilpancingo and threatened to pelt the bus with rocks unless he opened the door. The students, he said, boarded and ordered the passengers to get off. On a recent day, a hijacked gas tanker sat on the field near about 30 luxury buses from the lines that carry Mexico City vacationers to and from Acapulco. All of the buses are late model, with leather seats and individual televisions. "They know perfectly well which ones are the new ones," another driver, who also feared giving his name, said of the students.

Associated Press reporters discovered the captive drivers while reporting on the missing students, and had to talk quickly before students shooed them away. One driver warned journalists, "if they see you talking to us, they'll break your camera." A pair of students approached reporters as they left the lot. "Who gave you permission to be here?" they asked in angry tones. The men, who are fed simple meals by the students, said their companies do not pay them for their time as captives. While the students have promised to give them money when they are released, the drivers say that if they do receive anything, it won't come close to their normal earnings of nearly 20,000 pesos ($1,500) per month. "I haven't had a check for a month. I have to ask for a line of credit that I can't pay," said another driver, who was shirtless because he was hand-washing his only set of clothes. "I'm being ruined."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-29-11-12-45
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waltky · Nov 29, 2014

Mexican Federales takin' over crime scene investigation...

Mexican federal authorities take over investigation of new mass grave
Nov. 28, 2014 | The murders are most likely unrelated to the case of 43 students missing since September.

Mexican federal authorities took over an investigation Friday relating to 11 burned and decapitated bodies found near a rural road in the state of Guerrero. The bodies, along with a message from the perpetrators, were found by local authorities Thursday. The sign read, "Here goes your trash" followed by expletives, and allegedly signed by a criminal gang.

Murder investigations are usually handled by state or local authorities, and in this case, Guerrero authorities began the investigation before it was formally taken over by federal officials. The bodies were then taken to Mexico City to be examined by forensic experts.

All 11 bodies were male. Guerrero investigators said "it's worth pointing out that the bodies are missing their cephalic extremity, which were not placed in the immediate surroundings of the find." The bodies were also partially incinerated.

These bodies are most likely unrelated to the case of 43 missing students kidnapped and presumably murdered in September. That incident has sparked intense demonstrations and debate throughout the country. The town of Chilapa, near the site where the 11 bodies were found, witnessed a violent confrontation between gangs in July, leading authorities to enforce a curfew for several days.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...f-new-mass-grave/1201417203937/#ixzz3KVdewyPT
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longknife · Nov 29, 2014

Mexico is undergoing some severe unrest. The president is seeking constitution authority to do away with all local police forces to be replaced by state and federal.

waltky · Nov 30, 2014

Mexican president gonna get tough on crime...

Mexican Leader Announces Nationwide Crime Crackdown
November 27, 2014 ~ Mexico's president announced a nationwide anti-crime plan Thursday that would give Congress the power to dissolve local governments infiltrated by drug gangs and give state authorities control over often-corrupt municipal police.

As if to underscore the crime problem, Mexican authorities Thursday reported the discovery of 11 mutilated bodies in the violence-racked state of Guerrero, with a note left at the scene tying the massacre to a criminal group. The victims were reported to be men in their 20s who were shot, partially burned or beheaded before being dumped on a highway in the area of Chilapa. That discovery was made as the country marked the disappearance two months ago of 43 students at a teachers college in the Guerrero city of Iguala. They were reportedly killed and incinerated by a drug gang working with local police. "Mexico cannot go on like this," President Enrique Pena Nieto said in announcing his initiative.

His plan would relax the complex manner in which offenses are dealt with at federal, state and local levels. At present, some local police refuse to act to prevent federal crimes like drug trafficking. It would also seek to establish a national identity number or document, though it was unclear what form that would take. The plan would focus first on four of Mexico's most troubled states Guerrero, Michoacan, Jalisco and Tamaulipas sending more federal police and other forces to the "hot land" area of the first two states, where the government has already sent significant contingents of federal police and soldiers.

Demonstrator covers face with poster reading "Pena Out" during protest in support of 43 missing students outside office of Mexico's Attorney General, Mexico City

Other main proposals include:

Constitutional reform to establish unified state police forces, going from more than 1,800 weak municipal police forces to 32 forces in the country's 31 states and the capital.

Establishment of a single national emergency phone number, preferably "911."

Expeditious passage of anti-corruption legislation pending in Congress.

Emphasis on a reform agenda in the next session of Congress on civil justice and human rights, including reform of torture laws and investigations into disappeared persons.

Gang-related violence and the government's crackdown on cartels have left tens of thousands of Mexicans dead or missing since 2006.

http://www.voanews.com/content/corpses-found-troubled-mexican-state/2537305.html
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waltky · Dec 1, 2014

Pena Nieto waning in popularity...

Thousands March in Mexico City to Protest Pena Nieto Presidency
December 01, 2014 ~ Thousands of people marched in Mexico City today to protest against President Enrique Pena Nieto as polls showed the Mexican leader at his lowest approval level on the second anniversary of his inauguration.

Demonstrators marched from the capital’s central square, or Zocalo, to the Angel of Independence monument on the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard. Some called for the resignation of the 48-year-old leader, whose popularity has fallen after an apparent mass murder of college students, sluggish economic growth and a scandal involving his wife’s ties to a government contractor. “The reason we’re here is the outrage we feel as a people about the students,” said Juan Enrique Montoya a 39-year-old theater technician taking part in the protest. “This government is terrible. They passed all these reforms, but there hasn’t been any improvement.”
Story: Mexico Needs More Good Cops

The disappearance of the 43 students, allegedly kidnapped by police and killed by their allies in a drug gang in a southern town, has become a symbol for how drug-related violence has undermined the state’s grip on law and order. It has distracted attention from the administration’s moves to bolster the economy through increased competition and private investment in the state-controlled oil industry. Mexico’s government cut its forecast for 2014 economic growth to as little as 2.1 percent last month after a report showed the nation’s expansion missed analysts’ estimates for the eighth time in 10 quarters, held back by weak domestic demand.

Drug War

Mexico has also been racked by a drug war that’s left more than 70,000 dead since 2006, according to newspaper Milenio. Another 22,000 have gone missing, the Attorney General’s Office says. Mexico has seen weeks of demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets demanding justice and improved security. A survey released today by newspaper Reforma showed 39 percent of participants approved of Pena Nieto’s performance, the least for any president since the mid-1990s and down 11 percentage points from August. A separate poll by El Universal showed his approval rating at 41 percent, down from 46 percent in August.

Pena Nieto has also faced public criticism amid revelations that his wife, Angelica Rivera, agreed in 2012 to buy a home held in the name of a contractor that this year won part of a $4.3 billion Mexican high-speed rail contract. Pena Nieto’s administration canceled that award on Nov. 6, three days before the report was published by Aristegui Noticias. Rivera, a former soap opera star, said last month that she plans to sell rights to the house because critics had used it as a pretext to defame her family.

‘Get Out’

“In the latest few weeks and months we’ve seen a deterioration in the political environment,” said Ociel Hernandez, a strategist at Grupo Financiero BBVA Bancomer SA in Mexico City. Pena Nieto last week proposed sweeping changes to Mexico’s security strategy. They include replacing local police with unified state forces and boosting economic opportunity in southern states, among the nation’s poorest. Central bank Governor Agustin Carstens has also said violence is holding back growth. Mexico’s peso is the third-worst performer against the dollar in the past month among major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, losing 3.7 percent.

At today’s demonstration, Clemente Rodriguez, the father of missing student Christian Rodríguez, held a sign asking “Christian, where are you?” He said Pena Nieto should resign and led the crowd in chants of “Get out Pena.” “If my son Christian is hearing us, if the 43 students are listening, we’re looking for you,” he said. “We’re going to find the 43 students tomorrow or the day after. We’re waiting for you at home.”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...-mexico-city-to-protest-pena-nieto-presidency
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Mexican president's polls fall to near-record lows
Dec 1,`14 -- New polls published Monday show approval ratings for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto falling to some of the lowest levels in recent memory.

Just nine months after Pena Nieto appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "Saving Mexico," scandals and crises have pushed his approval rating down to around 40 percent. It's one of the lowest levels for a Mexican president since Ernesto Zedillo presided over the 1994-1995 economic crisis. A Buendia & Laredo poll for the El Universal newspaper showed Pena Nieto's approval rating falling from 46 percent in August to 41 percent in November, with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. A poll by the Reforma newspaper showed approval dropping from 50 percent in August to 39 percent in late November. It had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Francisco Abundis, director of the Parametria polling firm, said his company's figures showed Pena Nieto with a similar approval rating of 44 percent, and noted that was low for a Mexican president. "It's very difficult for them (Mexican presidents) to fall below 55 or 60 percent." But he also said that Pena Nieto has never achieved high ratings in Mexico, despite enthusiasm abroad for his market-oriented reforms. "What we have is a president who is stuck in the high to low 40s ... but there is no tendency," Abundis said.

Political consultant Ruben Aguilar, who served as spokesman for former president Vicente Fox, said the disappearance in September of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero played a partial role in the president's low approval ratings. The students were detained by local police in the Guerrero city of Iguala, who apparently turned them over to a drug gang that reportedly killed them and incinerated their bodies. Aguilar also said the execution by soldiers of about 15 suspects at a warehouse in southern Mexico on June 30 played a role. "Not only were these events extremely regrettable, but the government was also slow to react," said Aguilar. The governmental National Human Rights Commission said Monday that "violence, illegality and impunity are putting the country's stability and peaceful coexistence at risk, as never before."

That contrasts with the administration's ability to strike back-room deals to get reforms through Congress. Pena Nieto has opened the country's state-owned oil sector to private investment, tightened telecom regulation and passed a reform of the country's notoriously bad public school system. But when events like mass disappearances or executions occur, the government - which had long downplayed violence - was caught flat-footed. "This appears to be an administration with a lot of skill ... for things that are in their game plan, but an administration that reacts badly and slowly to unexpected events that aren't in its plans," Aguilar said. In a way, it's not surprising that Pena Nieto isn't lower; he was elected with only 38.15 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Mexico has no runoff elections. And for many other major leaders, like U.S. President Barack Obama, approval ratings in the low 40s have become the norm. Abundis said Mexicans generally appear to try not to be negative in answering pollsters' questions: "It's for unusual for a Mexican to give a flunking grade to an authority figure."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-12-01-22-36-45
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waltky · Sep 16, 2015

'Other disappeared' leave gaping holes in Mexican families...

'Other disappeared' leave gaping holes in Mexico's fabric
16 Sept.`15 On the morning of her high school graduation, Berenice Navarijo Segura was delayed for a hair and makeup appointment by an explosion of gunfire in the center of town. Her mother was up before dawn preparing stewed goat and beans for the celebration, and didn't want her to risk going out. Her sister, who had made enough salsa for 60 guests, tried to hold back the spirited 19-year-old with questions: "Do you have your wallet? What about your phone?"

But there was a reason the family called Berenice "Princess." She'd already paid the salon and was determined to look her best for the big day. Accustomed to dodging gun battles in a region overrun by drug cartels, she waited for only 20 minutes after the shooting subsided before rushing out the door with a promise to be quick. She hopped onto the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle and vanished into the ranks of Mexico's missing.

Snapshots with brief descriptions of missing people are tacked to a board in the San Gerardo Catholic Parish in Iguala, Mexico. Little attention had been paid to the many people who have disappeared or been kidnapped in this region until 43 students from a rural teachers college disappeared in Iguala, Sept. 26, 2014. Two months after the students disappeared, hundreds of families began coming forward to tell their stories, emboldened by the international attention focused on the missing students.

Sixteen other people, including Berenice's boyfriend, disappeared from Cocula on that day, July 1, 2013 more than a year before 43 students from a teachers college were detained by police in nearby Iguala and never seen again. For all those months, most of the Cocula families kept quiet, hoping their silence might bring children and spouses home alive, fearing that a complaint might condemn them to death. "What if I report it and my daughter is nearby and they know I reported it, they hurt her or something?" reasoned Berenice's mother, Rosa Segura Giral.

Relatives of Victor Albarran Varela look at a photo of him, at his home in Cocula, Mexico. He is among the 25,000 Mexicans who have disappeared since 2007, according to the governments count. Victor was 15 years old when he was taken on July 1, 2013.

Then the disappearance of the students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa became an international outrage. The government rushed to investigate the crime and announced with great fanfare its official conclusion that the youths had been killed and the ashes of their incinerated bodies dumped in Cocula. Emboldened by the sudden attention to abductions, the families of Cocula began coming forward, and hundreds of other families from the state of Guerrero emerged from silent anguish. They spoke of their misfortune to each other, often for the first time, and signed lists, adding the names of their loved ones to the government's growing registry of 25,000 people reported missing nationwide since 2007. They swabbed the inside of their cheeks for DNA samples. And they grabbed metal rods to poke in the craggy countryside for traces of the family members whom they started calling "the other disappeared."

In this May 12, 2015 photo, relatives of missing people gather under a tree at the San Gerardo Catholic Parish, in Iguala, Mexico. Little attention had been paid to the many people who have disappeared or been kidnapped in this region until 43 students from a rural teachers' college disappeared in this city on Sept. 26, 2014.

Sometimes they found evidence of bodies, and sometimes the authorities dug up graves from anonymous fields. More than 100 bodies have been pulled from the soil. But like the students of Ayotzinapa, all but one of whom are unaccounted for, so far the remains of only six of the other disappeared from around Iguala have been identified and given back to their families. The others are still missing. And their families are the other victims.

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waltky · Sep 18, 2015

A case of mistaken identity?...

A Mexican Gang Member Has Been Arrested in Connection With the Missing Students Case
Authorities are investigating whether the students' deaths are a case of mistaken identity

A leading suspect in the case of 43 missing Mexican students was arrested Wednesday in the city of Taxco, authorities say. Gildardo El Gil López Astudillo, a senior member of the Guerreros Unidos gang in the Iguala region, was detained in connection with the Sept. 26, 2014, disappearance of students from the Ayotzinapa teacher-training college, who were en route to a protest when the school buses they had commissioned came under attack from local police. Authorities say the students were likely then handed over to the Guerreros Unidos and killed. Astudillo allegedly told the gangs leader, arrested in October of last year, that the students were members of a rival gang called Los Rojos, or the Reds, reports Mexico News Daily, a Mexican English-language news site.

The case has become the subject of a high-profile mass-murder investigation and sparked nationwide protests over the past year. Authorities are now investigating whether the students deaths were caused by mistaken identity in the fight of territory between the two gangs, the Daily reports. The arrest comes as Mexican authorities say they have identified the remains of one missing student, Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz, in the garbage dump where the remains of another student was found in December

However, there has been disagreement about the garbage-dump connection. Earlier this month, an interdisciplinary group called the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a report stating that it was scientifically impossible for the students to have been burned at the Cocula trash dump. The report also said that one of the school buses may have had a stash of heroin on board that was headed for the U.S.

http://time.com/4039738/mexico-missing-students-gang-arrest/
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Mexico is outraged over citizens killed in Egypt but ignores the dead at home
Friday 18 September 2015 | The Mexican government has stood by as the country has seen more than 164,000 civilian deaths, 20,000 people go missing and over 70 journalists and media workers killed on its own turf since the drug wars inception in 2006. But none of those deaths and disappearances made the protection of Mexican citizens a priority for the president. Apparently, it took the deaths of Mexican tourists in the Wahat region of Egypts western desert to do that.

President Peña-Nieto has the gumption to ask the Egyptian government this week to perform an exhaustive investigation looking into the reasons why Egyptian forces air raided and killed twelve tourists, eight of which were Mexican nationals, after allegedly mistaking them for terrorists. While an investigation is certainly called for, theres a certain irony in Mexico acting concerned about the death of its citizens abroad as it is not doing enough to investigate municipal officials and police who are accused of actively facilitating the death of its own citizens and covering up these deaths.

The killings in Egypt come at a time when the president is managing the fallout of his own sham investigation surrounding the murders of 43 rural students in Iguala last year. This is on top of the still pending investigations concerning last years Tlatlaya massacre as well as the recent killings of journalists Nadia Vera and Rubén Espinosa in Mexico Citys Narvarte neighborhood this year. President Peña-Nieto and his colleagues in the Senate have expressed outrage, both on Twitter and in the media, at the events that occurred in Egypt. Mexicos foreign minister, Claudia Ruiz Massiu, flew to Cairo on Tuesday to seek answers from the Egyptian government, saying before her departure: We face a terrible loss of human lives and an unjustified attack that obligates us to make the protection of our citizens the priority. But why are some Mexican lives a priority for the Mexican government to protect and not others?

Just last week, an independent report from a group created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights revealed that the Mexican governments investigation into the deaths of the 43 students from Ayotzinapas rural school was full of contradictions. Details from the independent investigation discredit nearly every major conclusion of the official Mexican investigation and indict municipal, state, federal and military agencies in the coordinated murders and subsequent coverup of the Ayotzinapa students. Yet still, despite scientific evidence that goes against the official Mexican report, Mexicos Attorney General still insist on the veracity of the investigation.

Both the attorney general investigation and the independent investigation Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, however, agree on one fact: the mayor of Iguala, his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, as well as the towns police chief, Felipe Flores, collaborated with the Guerreros Unidos cartel to kill these students. These facts have been widely publicized. So have the facts surrounding the Mexican militarys role in the massacre of 22 civilians in Tlatlaya. And, most recently, Javier Duarte, the governor of Veracruz, has come under fire after the deaths of Nadia Vera and Rubén Espinosa, who were notorious critics of his rule. Before her death, Vera had said she holds the state totally responsible for her security, adding they are the ones who send people to repress us,

While the Mexican government likes to portray itself internationally as the victim of unruly drug gangs and corrupt local officials, these investigations raise serious questions about the complicity of the federal government in the crimes committed against its citizens. What do you make of a government that is accused of not doing enough to investigate the killings of Mexicos young people, writers, journalists and yet demands answers from an Egyptian government that despite a revolution is still keeping it together, however precariously. If youre Egypt, you can only laugh.

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...raged-citizens-killed-egypt-ignores-dead-home
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waltky · Sep 24, 2015

Parents protest lack of info on 43 missing students...

Parents of missing Mexico students protest
Fri, Sep 25, 2015 - TRUTH: Parents of 43 missing Mexican teaching students are still waiting for answers one year since they were allegedly attacked by local police and then disappeared

Parents of 43 Mexican students who disappeared last year began a 43-hour hunger strike on Wednesday, a day before meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto ahead of the cases anniversary. The families of the young men gathered under a white tarp in front of Mexico Citys cathedral at Zocalo square and declared the start of their protest at 7pm. Holding signs with the pictures and names of their sons, they sat as a doctor examined them to make sure they could take part in the nearly two-day fast.

They are to spend the night there under tents. For 43 hours, we will only drink water and well be fasting when we meet with the president, said Nardo Flores, whose son Bernardo is among the missing. It will be the second meeting between the parents and Pena Nieto since the disappearance last year, which turned into the biggest crisis of his administration and caused his approval rating to dip. The Mexican leader and the families were to come face-to-face at 1pm yesterday in a museum at the citys Chapultepec park. The parents attorney Vidulfo Rosales said they would call on Pena Nieto to order a new investigation and for authorities to present the 43 young men alive.

Relatives hold pictures of some of the 43 missing students of Ayotzinapa Raul Isidro Burgos College as they start a 43-hour hunger strike ahead of the first anniversary of the disappearance, at Zocalo Square, Mexico City on Wednesday.

Mexican Deputy Interior Minister Roberto Campa said the meeting between the parents and Pena Nieto would be complicated, as it involves the sensitive issue of Mexicos thousands of disappeared. Im confident that we will have a productive meeting, which will produce agreements to obtain the two main objectives, which are getting to the truth and getting justice, Campa said. The students, from a rural teacher college in the southern state of Guerrero, disappeared after they were attacked by local police in the city of Iguala. Prosecutors say police then delivered the young men who had gone to Iguala to hijack buses to travel to a protest elsewhere to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which killed them and incinerated their bodies.

However, the official investigation was questioned by independent experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, who said there was no evidence that the students were burned in a funeral pyre at a garbage dump. Only one student has been positively identified among charred remains while the attorney general said last week that there was a possible match for a second student. The parents and other students from their teacher college are to lead a protest in Mexico City tomorrow to mark the one-year anniversary of the mass disappearance.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/photo/2015/09/25/2008122738
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waltky · Sep 25, 2015

Body recovered but corpse bore witness to the horror of his final moments...

In search for Mexico's 43, 1 brutal killing goes ignored
Sep 25,`15 -- Unlike the families of the 43 students who disappeared a year ago, Julio Cesar Mondragon's loved ones were left with a body to bury. But there is little comfort in that, because Mondragon's corpse bore witness to the horror of his final moments.

His autopsy showed several skull fractures, internal bleeding and other injuries consistent with torture. His face had been flayed, a tactic often used by the drug cartels to incite terror. Photos of his bloody skull were uploaded to the Internet. International attention has been focused on the 43 students who vanished a year ago Saturday, but six others died at the hands of police in those hours, including Mondragon, a 22-year-old father of a girl who is now 1 year old. According to an independent group of experts, the disappearances and the killings were the result of a long, coordinated attack against students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa who had come to the southern city of Iguala to commandeer buses for a protest.

But the events of last Sept. 26 were far from isolated. Some 25,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico since 2007, and hundreds from the Iguala area in the last year alone. The disappearance of the students has drawn attention to others who have been lost, as well as brutal drug cartels, official corruption, government indifference and languishing legal cases. According to Mexico's former attorney general, the 43 disappeared in an attack by police and the Guerreros Unidos drug gang because they were mistaken for rival gang members. The attorney general said last November they were killed and burned to ash in a giant pyre in the nearby Cocula garbage dump. The independent experts assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took apart that version earlier this month, saying authorities knew who the students were from the minute they headed for Iguala, and at the very least did nothing to stop the attacks.

Afrodita Mondragon, mother of slain student Julio Cesar Mondragon, covers her face in grief as she speaks inside her home in San Miguel Tecomatlan, a rural town in the hills of Mexico state. Unlike the families of the 43 students who disappeared a year ago, Julio's loved ones were left with a body to bury. But there is little comfort in that, because his corpse bore witness to the horror of his final moments. His autopsy showed several skull fractures and other injuries and internal bleeding to his body consistent with torture. His face had been flayed, a tactic often used by the drug cartels to incite terror and send a message.

They say the funeral pyre simply didn't happen, and suggest the attack occurred because students unknowingly hijacked a bus carrying illegal drugs or money. Iguala is known as a transit hub for heroin going to the United States. Families say the judicial neglect extends to Mondragon and five others killed that night. His fellow students Daniel Solis and Julio Cesar Ramirez, were shot dead at close range. Driver Victor Manuel Lugo Ortiz and David Jose Garcia Evangelista, 15, died when police fired at a soccer team bus. Blanca Montiel, 40, was killed by stray gunfire while riding in a taxi. Mondragon had been on one of the buses when it was attacked, then later showed up at a press conference the students called at 12:30 a.m. amid the mayhem. He fled when police opened fire. Witnesses said shortly after they last saw him, they heard screams from someone they assumed had been detained. About 6 a.m., soldiers found his body less than a mile (kilometer) from where he disappeared.

Though Mondragon's autopsy points to torture, that doesn't appear in the court records. A report by a military unit at the scene said his face had been peeled off with a knife. But the autopsy says it could have been done by an animal after the body was dumped. His family calls that conclusion "a mockery." Mondragon's case could provide clues to who was behind the attack, according to the commission. But it languishes in three separate court files. Mondragon's body will be exhumed for a new autopsy. The former mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, is among 28 people charged with his killing. Authorities say he was the one who ordered the attacks. But Sayuri Herrera, lawyer for the Mondragon family, said it would be easy for any defense attorney to get the charges thrown out because the shabby investigative work and foggy charges filed by prosecutors could weaken the case. Charges have already been dropped against one police officer, who remains jailed for the missing 43. "There's not even clarity in the accusations," said Herrera.

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longknife · Sep 26, 2015

President Nieto has ordered one of the federal agencies to put all available resources into investigating exactly what happened.

waltky · Sep 26, 2015

Students' disappearance has become a `cause celebre' in Mexico...

Mexicans march on anniversary of 43 students' disappearance
26 Sept.`15 Thousands of people marked the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students by marching down Mexico City's premier avenue in an atmosphere of defiant hope Saturday.

Activists said the movement might bring justice for Mexico's disappeared, though only two of the students' remains have been identified by DNA analysis of charred bone fragments. While the march was smaller than past demonstrations, the case has helped publicize the thousands who have gone missing since Mexico's drug war started in 2006. Peace and anti-crime activist Maria Guadalupe Vicencio wore a skirt made of a Mexican flag splattered with fake blood. The names of three disappeared activists from her violence-plagued home state of Tamaulipas were written across her shirt. Vicencio said the students' movement "sets an example for all Mexicans to wake up, and not be silent."

People march along Paseo de la Reforma on the one year anniversary of the disappearance of 43 college students from Guerrero state, in Mexico City, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015. One year ago, several students and bystanders were killed and 43 students vanished in the city of Iguala, allegedly taken by police and then handed over to a criminal gang who burned their bodies in a garbage dump, according to a federal investigation. Families of the missing and independent investigators cast doubts on the official version.

In a meeting with the parents of the 43 missing students earlier this week, President Enrique Pena Nieto promised to create a special prosecutors' office to investigate all of Mexico's disappearances. More than 25,000 people disappeared in Mexico between 2007 and July 31, 2015, according to the government. Unidentified bodies often turn up in clandestine graves of the kind used by drug gangs to dispose of victims. But most people disappear without a trace. The 43 students from a radical teachers college disappeared on Sept. 26, 2014, after a clash with police in Iguala, a city in the southern state of Guerrero. Six other people were killed at the hands of the police during the disturbances. According to Mexico's former attorney general, local police illegally detained the students and then turned them over to the local drug gang Guerreros Unidos, which then allegedly killed them and incinerated their remains.

Relatives of the 43 missing college students hold images of their loved ones during a march marking the one year anniversary of their disappearance in Mexico City, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015. A year ago, several students and bystanders were killed and 43 students vanished in the city of Iguala, allegedly taken by police and then handed over to a criminal gang who burned their bodies in a garbage dump, according to a federal investigation.

A group of independent experts assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took apart that version earlier this month, saying the funeral pyre simply couldn't have happened at the small area of a garbage dump where prosecutors say it did. "For me, the parents of the students have taught us a lesson, about keeping hope for change alive," said Carlos Martel, a business executive who attended Saturday's march with his wife. The parents of the missing students many of them barely literate farmers marched silently at the head of the demonstration. They have refused to accept the government's version that their sons are dead and have called for a new investigation under international supervision. They stoically decline to concede that the chance their sons will be found grows ever more remote.

A woman holds up a sign with the number 43 and the name of a missing student as thousands prepare to mark the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of 43 rural college students from Guerrero state with a march in Mexico City

And they refuse to give up. "If they are betting on us getting tired, they're wrong," said Mario Cesar Gonzalez, the father of a missing student.While the government has agreed to re-evaluate the funeral pyre theory, the parents' movement is at a crossroads. Students and relatives of the missing young men blocked traffic on the main highway from Mexico City to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco on Saturday, but authorities are increasingly less willing to tolerate such disruptions. Many other Mexican social movements based on outrage, like the 2011 crime victims' caravans, have later lost steam. "You have to protest," said university professor Francisco de la Isla, who attended the demonstration with his two young sons. "But it's not enough just to hold marches. You can hold two or three marches, but with five, people get tired." "It's clear you need a political movement," de la Isla said.

http://news.yahoo.com/mexicans-march-anniversary-43-students-disappearance-191425225.html
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waltky · Oct 30, 2015

Parents of missing students won't celebrate Mexico's Day of the Dead...

Parents refuse to accept sons fate
Sat, Oct 31, 2015 - As millions of Mexicans set up altars to the dead and buy orange cempasuchil flowers to adorn their Day of the Dead offerings of food and drink, the parents of 43 college students who disappeared last year are refusing to accept the Mexican governments finding that their children are dead.

There will be no Day of the Dead altar for Mauricio Ortega, who was 18 when he and the other students were taken away by police in the southern city of Iguala on Sept. 26 last year. According to government prosecutors, the students were turned over to a drug gang who killed them and incinerated their remains. Charred bone fragments have provided a match to only two of the students. Mauricios father, Meliton Ortega, shakes his head when asked if the family will set up an altar to his son. No, for us, our sons are alive, Ortega said. Its not the way the government says, that we should just accept our grief.

Parents of the missing students have come up with other ways to mark their sons disappearances. At the radical rural teachers college attended by the young men, known as Ayotzinapa, plastic chairs with their names and photos are arranged in rows, a stark reminder of those who used to sit there. Their possessions have been left largely untouched, as if awaiting their return. After more than 13 months since their disappearance, that seems unlikely. And some, like former Mexican president Vicente Fox, have said the parents cannot live eternally with this problem in their heads ... they have to accept the reality.

Clemente Rodriguez, the father of missing student Christian Alfonso Rodriguez, said those who tell the families that their children are dead are people who do not have a heart or who work for the government. A report by an independent panel of experts concluded the students remains could not have been incinerated at a garbage dump as prosecutors argue. Parents insist their sons are alive and, with little proof, assert that the young men are being held at military bases.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2015/10/31/2003631379
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waltky · Nov 8, 2015

Mexican prosecutors stickin' their heads in the ground...

Mexico rights group blasts prosecutors over missing students
Nov 8,`15 -- Mexico's National Human Rights Commission is criticizing the Attorney General's Office for failing to address all the recommendations it made in July about the investigation into the fate of 43 missing college students.

In a document released Sunday, the commission said the office's response to its report has been "insufficient and imprecise" and prosecutors have failed to provide documentation to supports some of their positions. The human rights commission issued a list of 32 omissions in and recommendations for the investigation of the disappearance of the teachers' college students, a case that has sparked large protests and outrage around the world.

The students from the southern state of Guerrero disappeared in the city of Iguala while commandeering transit buses to take them to a protest. The Attorney General's Office says the students were detained by local police on Sept. 26, 2014, and handed over to a drug cartel, which killed and incinerated them at a dump. Their remains were allegedly put in garbage bags and dumped in a nearby river.

Relatives of the 43 missing Ayotzinapa teachers' college students lead a march marking the one-year anniversary of the students' disappearances in Chilpancingo, Mexico. In a document released Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission is criticizing the Attorney General's Office for failing to address all the recommendations it made in July about the investigation into the fate of 43 missing college students.

But the commission's July report said the federal investigation had not developed profiles of each of the missing students that would include basic details such as blood type, fingerprints and distinguishing characteristics such as scars or tattoo. Many of the report's observations concerned the collection and analysis of evidence from the garbage dump in Cocula and the San Juan river where allegedly bags of their remains were dumped. Later, an independent panel formed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also dismantled the government's official version of events.

The Mexican human rights commission said that of the 26 observations it made in its July report that related to the federal Attorney General's Office - there were also recommendations for state and local authorities - two were "partially attended to; one was partially addressed with a minimal advance; three are the process of being attended to and 20 weren't addressed" at all. Late Sunday, the Attorney General's Office released a statement saying it was ready to fulfill "each and every observation" made by the commission and said it would send it new documentation next week.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-11-08-21-28-50
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BPman · Nov 9, 2015

Nothing will change in Mexico until they have a revolution. Nothing.

waltky · Dec 15, 2015

Cartel killer tells his tale of murder...

30 lives extinguished, but no regrets: A killer's story
15 Dec.`15 The killer says he "disappeared" a man for the first time at age 20. Nine years later, he says, he has eliminated 30 people maybe three in error.

He sometimes feels sorry about the work he does but has no regrets, he says, because he is providing a kind of public service, defending his community from outsiders. Things would be much worse if rivals took over. "A lot of times your neighborhood, your town, your city is being invaded by people who you think are going to hurt your family, your society," he says. "Well, then you have to act, because the government isn't going to come help you."

He operates along the Costa Grande of Guerrero, the southwestern state that is home to glitzy Acapulco as well as to rich farmland used to cultivate heroin poppies and marijuana. Large swaths of the state are controlled or contested by violent drug cartels that traffic in opium paste for the U.S. market, and more than 1,000 people have been reported missing in Guerrero since 2007 far fewer than the actual number believed to have disappeared in the state.

A man claiming to be responsible for kidnapping, torture and killing on behalf of a drug cartel speaks to the Associated Press in Guerrero state's Costa Grande region, Mexico. The 29-year-old raises cattle for a living and doesnt consider himself a drug trafficker or a professional killer, although he is paid for disappearing people. While he acknowledges that what he does is illegal, he says he is defending his people against the violence of other cartels.

The plight of the missing and their families burst into public awareness last year when 43 rural college students were detained by police and disappeared from the Guerrero city of Iguala, setting off national protests. Then, suddenly, hundreds more families from the area came forward to report their kidnap victims, known now as "the other disappeared." They told stories of children and spouses abducted from home at gunpoint, or who left the house one day and simply vanished.

This is a story from the other side, the tale of a man who kidnaps, tortures and kills for a drug cartel. His story is the mirror image of those recounted by survivors and victims' families, and seems to confirm their worst fears: Many, if not most, of the disappeared likely are never coming home. "Have you disappeared people?" he is asked. "Yes," he replies.

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Mass grave found in Mexico believed to be students murdered by police officers

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Mass grave found in Mexico believed to be students murdered by police officers

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