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NY Times, Oct. 7 2014
43 Missing Students, a Mass Grave and a Suspect: Mexico’s Police
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
IGUALA, Mexico — They were farm boys who did well in school and took one
of the few options available beyond the backbreaking work in the corn
and bean fields of southern Mexico: enrolling in a local teachers
college with a history of radicalism but the promise of a stable
classroom job.
Leonel Castro, 19, the oldest of seven siblings, vowed to use his salary
to help his impoverished family. Júlio César, 19, thought he could run a
school one day and ensure the best for the next generation. Adán Abraham
de la Cruz, 23, wanted to put his computer skills to good use in the
classroom.
“He was just preparing himself to get ahead like any young person would
do,” said Mr. de la Cruz’s father, Bernabé.
Now, they are among 43 students reported missing after deadly clashes
with the police on Sept. 26, when at least six student protesters and
bystanders were killed in the restive, rural state of Guerrero, one of
the poorest in the country and long afflicted by political, social and
criminal upheaval.
The state prosecutor investigating why the police opened fire on
students from their vehicles has found mass graves in Iguala — the small
industrial city where the confrontations occurred — containing 28 badly
burned and dismembered bodies.
The prosecutors had already arrested 22 police officers after the
clashes, saying the officers secretly worked for, or were members of, a
local gang. Now they are investigating whether the police apprehended
the students after the confrontation and deliberately turned them over
to the local gang. Two witnesses in custody told prosecutors that the
gang then killed the protesters on the orders of a leader known as El
Chucky.
“I saw police trucks go up and down the hill to up there, where the
bodies are found,” said one man in the neighborhood near the site who
declined to give his name out of fear. “Then came the news they found
the grave and it may be the students. But you would be a fool around
here to accuse the police and expect to live.”
Even in a country accustomed to mass killings, the case has generated
alarm, both for the possible involvement of the police and for the fact
that the students were not known to have criminal ties. Miguel Martínez,
a representative for the families, said students at the school had
fought back against extortion attempts by gangs last year, but it was
not clear if that could have made them a target now.
The students, by many accounts, had been soliciting money in Iguala for
an Oct. 2 demonstration rejecting cuts to their state-financed school,
which opened in 1926 and has long played a role in local social justice
movements. Such student demonstrations are part of a well-known
militancy that goes back decades and has provoked violence in the past.
It did again this time, as students got into a skirmish with the police
when they tried to steal buses to take to and from the demonstration,
human rights groups said.
The mayor and the police chief of Iguala are now on the run, having
disappeared after being subpoenaed in the case, and the governor of the
state confirmed that the local gang, known as Guerreros Unidos, had
infiltrated the police force in Iguala, as well as other police
departments in the state.
The specter of corrupted police has haunted Mexico for years. But these
disappearances come at a time when President Enrique Peña Nieto is
already confronting the prosecution of at least three soldiers charged
with homicide in another recent case — the shooting death of 22 people
captured in a warehouse in June.
“I feel deeply outraged and dismayed,” Mr. Peña Nieto told reporters
Monday, referring to the violence here and dispatching the attorney
general and other federal forces to the region. “I regret, in
particular, the violence that occurred and especially that it was young
students who were affected and whose rights were violated in the city of
Iguala.”
Mr. Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón, also faced wave after
wave of police corruption scandals, with some entire local forces
dismissed. But experts say that, even as violence soared, both
administrations fell behind in putting in place measures to hold law
enforcement authorities accountable.
Only this year did Mexico pass a law allowing members of the military to
be tried in civilian courts for human rights abuses, and many feel that
Mr. Peña Nieto has been more focused on shifting the dialogue to
Mexico’s economy than on fighting corruption and improving security.
“A serious and sustained effort at reforming local police agencies has
been a pending agenda for a long time in Mexico,” said Matthew C.
Ingram, an assistant professor at the University at Albany who studies
justice in Mexico. “As long as local, municipal police agencies remain
weak, they will not have the capacity to generate public trust or resist
corruption and capture.”
Parents of the missing students doubt the effectiveness of state
investigators. A team of forensic experts from Argentina with long
experience in mass disappearance cases has arrived, and on Monday it
began interviewing family members and collecting other data as part of
an independent investigation, though it was unclear if the experts would
have access to the bodies found.
States officials said it could take at least two weeks and possibly
longer to identify the remains because of their poor condition.
And if the bodies are not those of the missing students, the question
remains: Where did they come from?
Several parents said they still hoped their children would be found
alive. Although the number of missing has fluctuated, the current list
of 43 was developed after students and human rights representatives said
they had called family members and friends and searched school grounds
and other places, failing to account for 43 classmates.
“We have to keep looking and praying,” said Santa Cruz Castro, the
father of Leonel.
He last spoke to his son when Leonel called him the day of the
confrontation, saying, “Don’t worry, Dad, I am going to the march,”
which Mr. Cruz took to mean the collection drive in Iguala. “And then I
didn’t hear from him and saw the news about the shootings. We didn’t
know what to do.”
In a sign of defiance and concern, placards and bumper stickers are
popping up here and in other cities in Guerrero on buses, storefronts
and buildings. Their slogan — #HastaEncontrarlos — means: “Until they
are found.”
Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Mexico City.
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