Mexico Convulsed Over the 43 Disappeared “Normalistas”

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Since the September 26, 2014 attack on students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero, in which 6 were killed, 25 were wounded, and another 43 were disappeared in Iguala, the state capital (120 miles south of Mexico City), Mexico has seen massive protests and Mexicans in general have participated in widespread soul searching.  More than one hundred students had traveled to Iguala to  protest what they said was unfair state education policy, as well as to raise money and  “commandeer” several buses to travel from Iguala to Mexico City for the anniversary of the infamous Tlatelolco student massacre of 1968.  According to authorities, the mayor of Iguala feared that the students would disrupt a speech by his wife and told the municipal police to stop them. The police ambushed them in a shootout, and in the aftermath, turned 43 of the students over to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, who reportedly killed them and burned their bodies at a municipal garbage dump to destroy the evidence.  Though President Enrique Peña Nieto has said that the incident is an “outrage and offence to Mexican society,” and has arrested many of the people allegedly involved, he and his government have been knocked into a spiral of crisis and defensive posturing.  Protesters across Mexico continue to call for the students’ safe return.