The 43 Students

As you have may have heard, in September, the municipal police of a town in Guerrero, Mexico where the mayor and his wife had close ties with the cartels kidnapped 43 protesting students from a poor teachers’ college. The fate of the missing 43 is basically known in that everyone knows they are dead, but not only the families but the entire nation is demanding that the bodies be found and perpetrators brought to justice. One body was found and the way of killing the kid is too graphic to be repeated here. Searches have not discovered the missing students–but have uncovered 40 other unknown bodies, reinforcing the terrible situation in Guerrero especially.

As Alma Guillermoprieto reports, the response has the feeling of the moment where Mexicans stand up and say enough to the violence of the cartels and the indifference of the government. Whether they can do anything about it is a whole other thing, but it has forced Peña Nieto to respond publicly, a pretty rare thing for a Mexican president. Terrible, horrifying story but maybe it will lead to something better in the long run.