Saw several articles mentioning the leftist politics of the disappeared students. (Old, old story in Latin America, isn't it?)
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Cartel hitmen confess to killing some of Mexico’s missing students
By Manuel Rueda @thisisfusion
Posted 10/06/2014 9:14 pm
Updated 10/06/2014 9:17 pm
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The motives for the crime are still unclear. But one hypothesis put forward by analysts following the case is that the students may have been targeted because of their radical leftist politics. Students at Ayotzinapa often block roads and hijack trucks during protests in which they demand improved conditions at their school and rally against Mexico’s education policies.
“Acts of political repression have been endemic to Guerrero for the past 40 years,” Javier Osorio, a criminologist at the City University of New York who specializes in violence in Mexico, told Fusion.
Osorio said that farmers’ groups, indigenous groups and other dissident organizations have been targeted by municipal and state officials and are frequently subjected to arbitrary arrests and monitoring.
The violence has occurred within a context of political instability in Guerrero, a southern state that has been home to three small guerrilla movements since the 1970s.
Two students from Ayotzinapa were killed in clashes with police in the city of Chilpancingo in 2011 after they blocked a highway that links Guerrero to Mexico City. At the time, the students were demanding that food subsidies be restored.
More:
http://fusion.net/story/19980/cartel-hitmen-confess-to-killing-some-of-mexicos-missing-students/
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Leftist Groups in New York Protest Student Killings in Mexico
October 9, 2014 7:00 am
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“It’s not a coincidence that this happened in the state of Guerrero,” says Moran, who remembers that 17 peasant protesters were killed in the state in 1995. According to Moran, the government is targeting leftist peasant and student organizations. “The normales [public teachers colleges that the missing students were attending] are seeds of radicalization. Students have normally been very active.” Moran also mentioned that several schoolteachers who became guerrilla leaders came from Guerrero, such as Othón Salazar, Lucio Cabañas and Genaro Vásquez.
Other than protesting the education cuts, the students in Iguala sought to raise funds for a trip to Mexico City to commemorate the 1968 massacre there of students by soldiers.
More:
http://latindispatch.com/2014/10/09/leftist-groups-in-new-york-protest-the-student-killings-in-mexico/
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Mystery of Missing Students in Mexico Shines Spotlight on Troubled City
Ayotzinapa Teachers College Had History of Radicalism, Run-Ins With Mayor
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The September clashes followed more than a year of tension between Mayor Abarca and the teachers college in the rural hamlet of Ayotzinapa, about 80 miles south of Iguala, officials, residents and students say.
Students seized and vandalized Iguala’s city hall in June 2013, accusing the mayor of involvement in the killing of a prominent leftist political activist, say officials, residents and students.
Federal police say they are investigating the death of the activist, Arturo Hernández.
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The all-male Ayotzinapa teachers college has about 520 students, mostly from poor farming families. It trains them to be elementary school teachers in rural communities. Its campus is festooned with murals of Marx, Lenin and Che Guevara as well as Mexican revolutionaries—including several of the school’s alumni.
Mr. Hernández shared the ideology of many of the school’s students and their penchant for protest. They are known across Mexico for highway blockades and other disruptions, officials and residents say.
Fernando Martínez, a fourth-year student at the college, said the school and Mr. Hernández were allies in the struggle for the rights of the oppressed.
“We supported each other’s causes,” Mr. Martínez said. “We shared the same leftist ideals. It was an alliance.”
More:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/mystery-of-missing-students-in-mexico-shines-spotlight-on-troubled-city-1412889032
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College of missing Mexican students vows to maintain revolutionary zeal
By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Foreign StaffOctober 9, 2014
The teachers college here, known as the Raul Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa, is one of 16 institutions around Mexico that arose following Mexico’s revolution nearly a century ago with the aim of training teachers to raise literacy and standards of living among the rural poor.
In more recent decades, the rural teachers colleges became bastions of ardent leftist politics, instilling in students self-reliance, a deep suspicion of the government and a sense that politicians were eager to take away their resources.
Two of the most famous alumni of Ayotzinapa are Lucio Cabanas and Genaro Vazquez, who joined a guerrilla movement in Guerrero state that emerged in the late 1960s. Both died after confrontations with Mexican authorities. An artistic rendering of their faces adorns one side of the basketball court, alongside that of Che Guevara.
The more than 100 students who headed to Iguala Sept. 26 hoped to raise money for a delegation to travel to Mexico City to take part in an annual march that commemorates the Oct. 2, 1968, Tlatelolco massacre, when government security forces opened fire on student protesters, killing perhaps as many as 300.
More:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/10/09/242906/college-of-missing-mexican-students.html?#storylink=cpy
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I'm glad you mentioned it. Looks as if we are moving closer to seeing what's behind this, doesn't it? Thank you.
= new reply since forum marked as read
