The parents of 43 students who disappeared in the state of Guerrero are pinning their hopes on the Mexican government to find out what happened to their offspring, albeit with serious misgivings.
“The information (the authorities) are giving us is incomplete and we don’t trust them. Nevertheless, we have to demand that they carry out an effective search and investigation and ensure all those responsible are brought to justice,” said a legal representative for the parents after they met this week for two hours with Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong and Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam.
Earlier in the week, the federal government demonstrated its determination to solve the case by offering a reward of 1.5 million pesos (111,000 dollars) for information on the whereabouts of the missing students. Advertisements in national newspapers announcing the reward were accompanied by photographs of each of the students.
The predominantly left-wing students from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ training college disappeared after a violent confrontation with police in the town of Iguala on September 26. Reports quickly surfaced that the 43 students had been rounded up by police officers and handed over to a local drug gang in the nearby town of Cocula.
As the search for the students intensifies, federal police have been dispatched to 13 towns in the region, where municipal officers face questioning on their possible links to organized crime. All have had their weapons confiscated and security in the towns is now in the hands of federal officers. Public confidence in municipal police forces in Guerrero is at an all-time low, local newspapers there are reporting.
Investigators believed they had made a breakthrough in the case when several clandestine mass graves were recently discovered in the region. But preliminary analysis of 28 bodies found in one grave showed that none belonged to the students.
Meanwhile, investigators have detained more than 30 police officers in Iguala and on Wednesday ordered the arrest of the former mayor of the town, José Luis Abarca, his wife and the chief of police, all of whom are fugitives. Speaking at a press conference, Attorney General Murillo called the mayor and his wife the “probable masterminds” in the disappearance of the students. He said that when Abarca heard that the September protest by students would disrupt an event organized by his wife, he dispatched municipal police to break it up.
Also last week, authorities announced the arrest of Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, the presumed leader of the Guerreros Unidos, the local drug gang that is alleged to have taken the students after they were detained by the Iguala police.
The case of the missing students has inflamed social tensions in Guerrero and led to protests in all corners of Mexico and abroad. Thousands of University of Guadalajara students marched Thursday to express their indignation at the situation in Guerrero (see story page one).
During one protest in Guerrero, demonstrators lobbed fire bombs at the town hall of Chilpancingo, the state capital, causing severe damage to the building. In another, the offices of a state social welfare program were set alight.
President Enrique Peña Nieto has admitted that the efforts of government and society to bring law and order to the country are being undermined by the situation in Guerrero.