Federal investigators believe they are one step closer to solving the mysterious disappearance of 43 students in the state of Guerrero. Their optimism follows the arrest this week of the former mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda.
Abarca was in office at the time the teacher training students disappeared in the aftermath of a violent clash with police on September 26.
Abarca and Pineda fled the state several days after the students went missing amid rumors that they may have masterminded the mass abduction.
Investigators believe Pineda ordered municipal police to break up the student demonstration because it would have affected a social event his wife was due to attend that evening.
Police officers are suspected of handing the 43 students over to a local drug gang. Although several mass graves have been discovered in the region over the past six weeks, none of the students’ bodies have been recovered.
Federal police traced the former mayor and his wife to a modest house in the Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City, owned by a relative of Pineda. Abarca is being held at the maximum security jail in Almoloya in the State of Mexico, while his wife is in custody in the capital. Charges are pending, authorities say.
The case has provoked widespread anger throughout the country, prompting large demonstrations in urban areas and disturbances in several towns and cities in Guerrero.
Family members of some of the missing students met this week with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has guaranteed to get to the bottom of the matter and punish those responsible. Unfortunately for a president who is keen to make Mexico’s economic regeneration the focal point of his administration, the case of the missing students is likely to overshadow all other news until it is solved.
The scandal has also damaged the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which postulated Abarca for the role of Iguala mayor. According to some reports, Abarca and his wife lived a lavish lifestyle while in office that went way beyond what would be possible on a mayor’s salary. Allegations that he was in the pockets of drug gangs had been rife for some time, local news sources attest.
Former PRD National President Jesus Ortega this week hit back at critics who have blamed his party for the students’ disappearance and initiated a “campaign of hate.” He singled out Cardinal Norberto Rivera, the archbishop of Mexico City, who said the PRD are “a danger to the country,” and the Televisa broadcasting network for their biased reporting against his party.