The mass graves discovered in Iguala, Mexico are believed to contain the bodies of 43 students and teachers, who were kidnapped on September 26. Authorities have arrested numerous police officers from the small city of Iguala, who have confessed to working with gang members to kill and bury the students and teachers in the mass graves.
The Iguala mass graves story sheds light on how the drug cartels run local governments in Mexico. On September 26, a group of 80 students and teachers from the Ayotzinapa college in Iguala took the streets to protest the new education laws.
In an effort to get locals to join and donate to their cause, about 60 of them boarded 3 buses at the town’s central station. In Mexico, it is a well known tradition that demonstrators will sometimes hijack or “borrow” public buses, use and return them.
The tradition is not liked by the Mexicans, who are inconvenienced as they are making their way back home or heading to work.
Police officers and criminals, who are members of the Guerreros Unidos gang (in many Mexican cities the two are the same,) were not amused by the protest and started shooting at the buses.
According to local media, three passersby including a 15-year-old girl were killed by the gangsters and police’s bullets. Few of the students managed to escape, but 43 demonstrators were taken to a forest where they were murdered, burned to charcoal and buried in 10 mass graves.
In a statement issued by Governor Angel Aguirre, he claimed that the remains found in Iguala mass graves are not those of the kidnapped students and teachers.
When asked on the whereabouts of the protesters, he declined to answer. Mr Aguirre had no explanation as to why Iguala’s Mayor Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez, his wife and the police chief fled the day the mass graves were unearthed.
Some parents of the missing students do not believe the bodies found in the mass graves are of their loved ones.
Many say that President Enrique Peña Nieto and his government are hiding and even torturing the kidnapped students because of their political views.
The students were trying to raise money to travel to the capital to take part in a political event, honoring those killed in the Tlateloco massacre of Oct 2, 1968.
But according to Guerrero state prosecutor Iñaky Blanco, several of the 22 police officers arrested have confessed to killing the students with the help of drug boss El Chucky and members of his Guerreros Unidos gang.
Mexico has called on forensic experts from Argentina to assist with DNA testing on the bodies found at the mass graves.
