Mexico's search for bodies reveals a history of hidden deaths

[Judi Lynn]

Mexico's search for bodies reveals a history of hidden deaths
By Joshua Partlow,
Washington Post
December 13, 2014, 9:57 AM|IGUALA, Mexico

They picked up spent shotgun shells and placed them in plastic baggies for safe keeping. They examined discarded bottles, charred sticks, crusted weather-worn clothes. Over rocks and ridges, to the tops of trees and down in bone-dry riverbeds, the parents were searching for their children's graves..

"Fifteen minutes more," a father in dusty camouflage said before trudging farther up into the thick Mexican forest, hacking the thorny branches with his machete. "Just a little farther."

Forty-three students went missing here in September, and for all the attention that received, they were hardly the first. Their abduction by police has loosed a flood of new accusations and begun to reveal a history of hidden deaths.

Before that crime, many people had been too afraid of the police to report the disappearances. Last month, just seven parents attended the first meeting in the basement of a Catholic church here for relatives of the missing. But as the national uproar over the students has grown, plus the arrest of the Iguala mayor, the dissolution of the town's police force and the torching of city hall, the scope of the brutalities began to become clear. Dozens, then hundreds, of people came to subsequent meetings at the San Gerardo church, which has become the gathering point for a citizen movement to search the surrounding hills and fields for the students' remains.

More:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/chi-mexico-hidden-deaths-20141213-story.html#page=1

[Demeter]

1. My heart to those parents

May they find what they are looking for....and revenge!

[Warpy]

2. Revenge? I think not

Just put the crooked mayor, his crooked wife, their pet crooked cops, and the vicious drug gang executioners into prison where they can never do it again.

What is making this case so different is that these weren't throwaway people. They were educated people from educated families.

What is making this case so important is that it's blowing the lid off systemic corruption throughout Mexico, the collusion among local government, crooked police, and drug gangs.

[Demeter]

3. There are no throwaway people

Except those who think there are.

[Warpy]

4. And the perpetrators of the student murders

thought the students were. They were wrong.

Usually it's been one at a time, people who speak out about conditions in factories or in agribusiness, people who speak out about abuse from police or drug thugs. Mouth shut, head down, that's the way for people who are not in the rich ruling class to survive.

Until now.