By Brendan McGlone
Corrupt police abducted 43 Mexican students in September.
After months of protest across the country demanding information on the missing students, the Mexican government informed its citizenry that the students were murdered, their bodies incinerated in a garbage dump and their ashes thrown in a river.
Violent demonstrations have broken out across Mexico as a result.
The 43 students were studying to become teachers at a college in the rural Mexican town of Ayotzinapa, when on September 26th they traveled to nearby Iguala to protest the lack of funding for their school.
Allegedly at this event, police officers handed the group of young men in their 20s to members of the Guerroros Unidos drug cartel. These thugs massacred the 43 and disposed of their bodies.
The story is almost too evil to believe.
Unfortunately, the truth is often scarier than fiction. The Mexican federal government, however, does not see the crime as a national priority.
President Peña Nieto has been publicly condemned for traveling to China for Mexican business interests during the ongoing investigation, an indication of the government’s sentiment towards its concerned citizenry.
Perhaps more unnerving is that the initial order to stop the demonstration in Iguala was given directly by the town’s mayor to the police chief, who did not want the protest to disrupt his event. What knowledge the mayor had about the horror that would happen subsequently is unclear.
Regardless, one thing is clear: the Mexican public is angry.
Tens of thousands marched in Mexico City earlier this week, and across the nation various demonstrations have turned violent.
A crowd set the state congress of Guerrero ablaze, as well as the education department’s audit office, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s regional (PRI) headquarters.
In a separate incident, protestors marched on Acapulco’s airport, blockading the runway for three hours as they fought with police. The destruction they are causing is the only way they can actively express such immense disdain for their government.
However desperate for justice they may be, this display of violence only serves to undermine the cause for which they fight.
The massacre of 43 students is a crime of government negligence.
It should not be the burden of any nation’s public to hold their government accountable for crimes, but that is the reality of modern politics.
Public officials are bought and sold by big businesses, and the public interest is largely ignored. The people of Mexico are fed up, and if the government does not change its priorities, the violence will only grow.
