The great mystery
A grisly crime and a possible cover-up remind Mexicans of what they most dislike about their government
EVEN the official story is shocking. In September 2014 a group of student teachers from Ayotzinapa, in the south-western state of Guerrero, decided to commandeer some buses in the nearby town of Iguala. They wanted to go to a rally in Mexico City, and it is common for students in this part of Mexico to take buses for such things. They usually return them.
Forty-three of those students disappeared, and are presumed dead. The mayor of Iguala and his wife were angry with them for having disrupted a political event, the federal government says, and ordered the local police to hand them over to a drug gang, the Guerreros Unidos. The gangsters mistook the students for members of a rival gang. They killed them, burned their bodies at a rubbish dump and tossed the remains in a river.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The great mystery"
From the April 30th 2016 edition
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