Gruesome murders and threats of violence stalk Mexican activists

Two activists who had campaigned for justice and searched for the victims of forced disappearances were brutally murdered in Mexico’s troubled south this month.

Last Friday, 26-year-old Norma Angélica Bruno Román was shot dead in front of her three children at a cemetery in Iguala, the same city where 43 students were abducted by corrupt police officers last September.

She was a member of a citizen-led organization combing mass graves in this troubled area of Guerrero state in search of missing relatives.

Nine days earlier, Gustavo Salgado Delgado, a 32-year-old leader of the left-wing Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR), was decapitated in the neighboring state of Morelos.

He had campaigned on behalf of migrant farmers from southern Mexico and played an active role in local demonstrations demanding the safe return of the 43 students from the rural teacher training college in Ayotzinapa.

As the disappearance of the students has spurred a huge protest movement, the Mexican government has repeatedly sought to bury the case, while police officers have infiltrated marches and even threatened to rape, murder and incinerate demonstrators.

The culprits were not apprehended in either of the recent killings and it is not yet clear whether either victim was targeted because of their work. Still, the murders are further evidence of the dangers that activists face across Mexico, especially in the country’s lawless south…

Click here to read this article in full at Latin Correspondent.