Another 31 Mexican students reportedly abducted in Guerrero in July
The nightmarish saga of Mexico’s 43 missing students took another dramatic twist this week with the revelation that another 31 students may have been kidnapped in the southern state of Guerrero in July.
French media outlet France24 reported that the high school students from the town of Cocula were abducted in broad daylight by masked men in navy blue uniforms and driven away in police cars on July 7.
The local families, who said they have not seen their children since, were reportedly threatened with death if they spoke out or reported the incident.
Cocula lies only a short distance from Iguala, where 43 trainee teachers were abducted in late September. Prosecutors believe the teaching students were then driven to Cocula, where they were murdered and their bodies incinerated.
Dozens of police officers from the Iguala and Cocula forces have been arrested in connection with the latter incident.
There are no government records of disappearances in Cocula in July, but it is not unusual for such crimes to go unreported in Mexico due to fear of reprisals and suspicion that local authorities are working with the perpetrators…
Click here to read this story in full, including the latest on the arrest of student demonstrators and the scandal over President Enrique Peña Nieto’s properties in Mexico City.
Maverick priest becomes the unlikely face of Mexico’s protest movement
“Neither the left nor the right, we’re those from the bottom and the middle, and we’re coming for those at the top,” reads this banner from last night’s peaceful march in Guadalajara.
What began with a few families demanding to know the whereabouts of their missing children has morphed into a national movement that threatens to bring down the president of Mexico.
Protests in Mexico reflect public disdain for political parties
Students from the University of Guadalajara demand the safe return of their counterparts from Ayotzinapa.
Another wave of mass demonstrations shook Mexico on Thursday as tens of thousands of protesters marched across the country to demand the safe return of the 43 missing students and the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Already damaged by the disappearance of the students who were abducted and most likely murdered in late September, Peña Nieto’s image has been further soiled by the scandal over the luxury mansion his wife bought from a controversial government contractor in one of the capital’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
Shortly after returning from a week-long trade mission in Asia, the president appeared to be feeling the heat on Tuesday, when, instead of recognizing the protesters’ legitimate concerns, he slammed them for conspiring to “destabilize” his government.
In a bid to diffuse the crisis that night, First Lady Angélica Rivera posted a YouTube video in which she vowed to sell the controversial property, despite insisting that she had bought it legitimately using her own considerable career earnings as a soap star.
But the gambit quickly backfired and Rivera’s intervention was roundly mocked on social media after she claimed to have earned approximately 10 million dollars in 2010 and disdainfully – in full-ontelenovela mode – denounced all criticism as attempts to “defame” her husband…
Click here to read this story in full at Latin Correspondent.
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