# Iguala, Gro.



## diablita

Hitmen admit killing 17 of 43 missing Mexican students 

What an absolutely horrible and incredibly sad situation.


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## Longford

Guerrero is and has for generations been a state in which disputes and grudges are settled by killing the one you have a disagreement with. Mob and vigilante and/or _auto defensa_ violence isn't rare in parts of Mexico, either. None of this is an excuse to execute "studlents" some or all of whom were acting criminally (if the published reports are accurate). It will be a mistake if someone associates what happened in Iguala with the drug war, however (there's a reference in the linked news article). The murder rate in the state of Guerrero is abnormally high but this incident does not appear to have involved any expats (students). As for expats who might live in Iguala and close-by: there are probably some naturalized USA citizens of Mexican ancestry/birth and maybe some expat spouses. I like the city but it's not a place many expats without family ties there will probably consider as a place to live. Yes, condolences and sympathies to the family and friends of those lost. Whether those truly responsible for this will be brought to appropriate justice and punishment may or may not occur.


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## Hound Dog

Longford said:


> Guerrero is and has for generations been a state in which disputes and grudges are settled by killing the one you have a disagreement with. Mob and vigilante and/or _auto defensa_ violence isn't rare in parts of Mexico, either. None of this is an excuse to execute "studlents" some or all of whom were acting criminally (if the published reports are accurate). It will be a mistake if someone associates what happened in Iguala with the drug war, however (there's a reference in the linked news article). The murder rate in the state of Guerrero is abnormally high but this incident does not appear to have involved any expats (students). As for expats who might live in Iguala and close-by: there are probably some naturalized USA citizens of Mexican ancestry/birth and maybe some expat spouses. I like the city but it's not a place many expats without family ties there will probably consider as a place to live. Yes, condolences and sympathies to the family and friends of those lost. Whether those truly responsible for this will be brought to appropriate justice and punishment may or may not occur.


Iguala, at 2441 feet, is actually between the highlands and the hot country which is inland from the coastal zone. We sometimes drive through Guerrero on our way between Chiapas and Lake Chapala and typically stay on Coastal Highway 200 if we drive through that state and it is our understanding that that región of Guerrero most afflicted by violence is the Tierra Caliente although the state, while physically beautiful in many places, is, as inferred by Longford, a bit unstable and violent. Maybe, for a while, we´ll take the shorter and safer routes between Chiapas and Lake Chapala by driving through Oaxaca or Veracruz. If one stopped by ruffians in rural Guerrero,on some back country road, one might as well just kiss one´s butt goodbye. 

Iguala is a relatively attractive town and I hate to see the town suffering from this mass killing perhaps perpetrated by corrupt officials. While we had never considered moving to the Iguala área (or really, Guerrero in general except briefly) , we, about a year of so ago, thought of buying a house on the beach in an isolated rural village between Marquelia and Copala, Guerrera but the wild and overwhelmng surf there right on the Pacific and the community´s isolation proved a bit much for us just as the Southern Caribbean coast in Quintana Roo did as well despite calmer seas. When one gets off the beaten path in parts of mexico one is really out there in the middle of nowhere in somewhat lawless territory.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Godfather of my number one son is a native of Iguala. Though he was fortunate enough to go to college, work for a U.S. company and wind up living the high life as a U.S, permanent resident in Miami, we did go to some family events in Iguala. It's hardcore Mexico. Never saw another ******. The wealthy don't show off their wealth. I noticed the guys do tend to strut around. Well before the current drug wars, chilangos certainly told each other not to stop in Iguala on the way to Acapulco, before the highway was built. On the other hand, it is pure Mexico.


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## sparks

And all seems to over nothing. Demonstrations a little more work for the police and they sure don't effect gang activity. Too crazy


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## Longford

And let's not forget 22 others recently massacred, allegedly by elements of the Mexican Army:

Mother of dead girl says Mexican troops executed 22 drug gang suspects | World news | theguardian.com


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## terrybahena

We are actually planning a trip down to Guerrero to visit our beach house, right in the area Hound Dog was referring to along coastal highway 200. It is not near Iguala, and we are not worried. However, we travel cuota roads only. Never at nite, and will stick to the coast...then we're off to Morelia to visit hubby's family. We've just been waiting for better weather which should be by the end of the month. People in that small village say it is no where near them and they live life as always. I do however get an email every day of a newspaper called Mexico News Daily and they have mentioned people taking the law into their own hands (again). So we will as always, proceed with eyes open. (I don't totally understand the news story either....it's kind of conflicting...like everything here....


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## Hound Dog

Terry:

I think you are right. For road traveling in Guerrero, stick to or near the coast and the cuotas (when possible) and get off the road before dark. What´s amusing (to me at least) is that we lived on the wild coast at Devil´s Slide just south of San Francisco for about ten years and loved the almost constant huge surf just outside our door. The coast in parts of Guerrero is quite reminiscent of tha turbulent Pacific Coast in California from about Big Sur to the Oregon State Line. It does get quite foggy there right on the coast at San francisco more often than one might desire. I´ll take the warm seas of Mexico, except for Northern Baja with its comparatively cold current, any day. 14 years after moving here, we do not regret that decisión to retire to Mexico at all. I´ll have to subscribe to that electronic newspaper you receive on the internet. One must admit that, despite years of violence reported in the media, the Iguala mass murder was, to say the least, disturbing.


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## Longford

There have been many problems in Guerrero, in the communities bordering HWY. 200. They don't make the national news, but you see them reported in the local media and learn of them by word-of-mouth from people in the area. I've traveled the California coastline and know the Costa Chica of Guerrero very well, and there's little comparison other than they're close to the Pacific Ocean.


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## GARYJ65

Dear Terry
Conflicting...like everything here?


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## terrybahena

I also come from the coastline right above San Francisco (the Dog was south), and so here in northern Baja where we do have fog once in a while, and now the days are still warm enough for swimming but the nites require at least the sheet or light blanket for sleeping, I am comfy. The only thing, and the "negative" is too strong..for me now is I'm in a community where I'm not forced to used Spanish...but the trade off is the beach out one door and an estuary out the other. But that's on me, not venturing into the town next door enough- so there's my own little conflict. Yes Guerrero is tricky...and sometimes things are going on and you are not even aware....but being married to a Mexican has, so far anyway...pretty much kept me safe. I remember right as we left the area that some vigilantes had taken care of local kidnappers...and honestly I don't know how I feel about that. The "officials" certainly weren't helping....not sure what side they were on...but the problem went away....for me, in Mexico...I am: see nothing, know nothing.....conflicting...yep


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## diablita

El Universal - Nación - Cisen vincula al alcalde de Iguala con los Beltrán

The article has some photos of the police presence in Iguala now. The Federal Police and The Mexican Army have been patrolling around Acapulco for a couple of years.


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## Longford

Here's an article referring to what Diablita posted, but in English. 

Mexican troops head to Iguala, site of mass graves - CNN.com


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## ojosazules11

For those who don't read Spanish, the article in Diablita's post goes into detail about the connections between the mayor of Iguala, his wife and her family, and organized crime. Also it goes into details about bribery, corruption and money-laundering which the mayor of Iguala was involved in, in relation to the PRD at the state and federal levels. 

The article also outlines that the mayor's wife is president of the municipal DIF and she was going to be presenting her report in the zócalo the evening of the massacre. She did not want this to be disrupted by the student protestors who were on their way to the zócalo. Orders were given, and without going into all the details of the article, the students were shot at, some died then and there, and as now has been discovered, many of those detained had a worse fate in store.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Ojos, re "connections between the mayor of Iguala, his wife and her family, and organized crime. Also it goes into details about bribery, corruption and money-laundering which the mayor of Iguala was involved in, in relation to the PRD at the state and federal levels:"

All I can say is, what an aberration for Mexico!


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## Hound Dog

We try to fly under the radar in Mexico whether in any of the states in which we live or travel down south, I must say, however, that in Southern Mexico you must never trust anyone includng yourself. In all the southern Mexican states into which I venture I see nor hear any evil. I confide in no one but my spouse and won´t even breathe hard around anyone wearing a uniform. One can get along pretty well as long as one does not irritate even the most moronic and seemingly insignificant crossing guard with a badge and a cocked hat. What a shame.


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## ojosazules11

Hound Dog said:


> We try to fly under the radar in Mexico whether in any of the states in which we live or travel down south, I must say, however, that in Southern Mexico you must never trust anyone includng yourself. In all the southern Mexican states into which I venture I see nor hear any evil. I confide in no one but my spouse and won´t even breathe hard around anyone wearing a uniform. One can get along pretty well as long as one does not irritate even the most moronic and seemingly insignificant crossing guard with a badge and a cocked hat. What a shame.


Reminds me of a time in the early 80's when I was with a group of university students doing a study tour of Central America. We were in rural Honduras. There was a military checkpoint. Heavily armed soldiers boarded our small bus, some still too young to shave. I remember one particular boy soldier seriously examining our passports. However he gave away the fact that he wasn't reading them (perhaps couldn't read?) as he held several of the passports upside down as he "read" them!

But as you rightly point out, HD, not a snicker from any of us nor a sideways glance that could be misinterpreted.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

diablita said:


> El Universal - Nación - Cisen vincula al alcalde de Iguala con los Beltrán
> 
> The article has some photos of the police presence in Iguala now. The Federal Police and The Mexican Army have been patrolling around Acapulco for a couple of years.


L.A. Times take on Iguala crisis:
Mexico deploys federal forces to missing students' city - LA Times


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## Hound Dog

Dawg loves Chiapas and that´s why we live part of each year. there I also love the incredible state of Oaxaca and other southern states down there but, after 13+years of living in Mexico full time and Southern Mexico part of every year for eight years, I have learned to understand the attitude, of Mexican nationals especially among the poor, who keep a low profile and mind your own business. I´m not saying that´s right, just that it is. 

I and my kin , all very decent and civil people, went through that before in the racially violent south of the United States in the 1950s through the 1960s. We, as is true of mexicans, were protecting ourselves and our families by our silence when the kluxers /cartels were/are committing unspeakable atrocities against African Americans/competitors/law enforcement agents and their sympathatizers among the European American population of my home state or Mexico. People. whether in the U.S., Mexico or anywhere else on this planet, draw into their shells during turbulent and dangerous times and fail to see or acknowledge the injustices obviously occurring all about them and do not kid yourself about this. This is a constantly recurring theme in human history and one will not change that fact by pretending it ain´t so. 

Just be sure to avoid personal sanctimony as that is unbecoming.

By the way; Iguala is an attractive town in a nice part of Guerrero and I hate to see it villified. This can happen in your town as well.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

diablita said:


> Hitmen admit killing 17 of 43 missing Mexican students
> 
> What an absolutely horrible and incredibly sad situation.


LA Times on Mex City march:

Thousands in Mexico demand justice over missing students - LA Times


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> LA Times on Mex City march:
> 
> Thousands in Mexico demand justice over missing students - LA Times


NY Times investigation on Iguala, pretty colorful but appropriately macabre:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/w...t-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0


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## Hound Dog

In have livd in Southern Mexico long enough to predict that the Iguala massacre will become history very soon.

I did live and work around many Chinese folks in San Francisco for many years and I never forgot what a cohort of Chinese ancestry whose mother and father living in Oakland spoke very Little English said to me. "We are constitutionally prone to acquiescence but you push us too far and all hell will break loose and you will not know what suddenly transcended upon you ass."

Some day some time soon, Mexicans will have had enough of this outrage that happened in places like Iguala ( nice town by the way) and the sh*t will hit the fan.


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## Isla Verde

Hound Dog said:


> In have livd in Southern Mexico long enough to predict that the Iguala massacre will become history very soon.
> 
> I did live and work around many Chinese folks in San Francisco for many years and I never forgot what a cohort of Chinese ancestry whose mother and father living in Oakland spoke very Little English said to me. "We are constitutionally prone to acquiescence but you push us too far and all hell will break loose and you will not know what suddenly transcended upon you ass."
> 
> Some day some time soon, Mexicans will have had enough of this outrage that happened in places like Iguala ( nice town by the way) and the sh*t will hit the fan.


For some time now, I've been wondering when the next Mexican Revolution will break out.


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## sparks

The students hijacked a not currently located bus loaded with drugs (unbeknownst to them) .... now that makes sense


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## Isla Verde

sparks said:


> The students hijacked a not currently located bus loaded with drugs (unbeknownst to them) .... now that makes sense


I know they hijacked a bus, something commonly done by normalistas in that part of Mexico, but I hadn't read that it was loaded with drugs. A link would be nice . . .


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## Longford

We may some day learn what really happened, the entirety of the story, in Iguala. While I don't codone star chamber proceeding and the instant sentence of 'justice," I don't have much sympathy for "students" who continually disregard the law and the rights of fellow residents/citizens. Mexicans have little or no confidence in or respect for the criminal justice/judiciary systems in Mexico and I'm hearing (in the D.F.) a surprising amount of comments about Iguala, such as "they got what they deserved." Of course, this is a city where the citizenry is continually inconvenienced by one large and worthless demonstration after another.


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## Isla Verde

Longford said:


> We may some day learn what really happened, the entirety of the story, in Iguala. While I don't codone star chamber proceeding and the instant sentence of 'justice," I don't have much sympathy for "students" who continually disregard the law and the rights of fellow residents/citizens. Mexicans have little or no confidence in or respect for the criminal justice/judiciary systems in Mexico and I'm hearing (in the D.F.) a surprising amount of comments about Iguala, such as "they got what they deserved." Of course, this is a city where the citizenry is continually inconvenienced by one large and worthless demonstration after another.


None of my Mexican friends, in the DF or elsewhere, have expressed sentiments like "they got what they deserved", about the massacre of the normalistas in Iguala. They are horrified, and rightly so, about what has happened. This includes friends in the DF who've had enough of demonstrations and marches that have inconvenienced them from time to time. For forum members who read Spanish well, here's a link to an article from El País, which gives an accurate (and grim) analysis of the situation in Guerrero: ¿Por qué el crimen organizado atenta contra la sociedad civil en México? | Internacional | EL PAÃ�S.


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## citlali

That is not what I am hearing from the people down here. I have not heard one peson who is not outraged by what happened and there ae lots of marches and blocking of roads to protest the massacre.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Isla Verde said:


> None of my Mexican friends, in the DF or elsewhere, have expressed sentiments like "they got what they deserved", about the massacre of the normalistas in Iguala. They are horrified, and rightly so, about what has happened. This includes friends in the DF who've had enough of demonstrations and marches that have inconvenienced them from time to time. For forum members who read Spanish well, here's a link to an article from El País, which gives an accurate (and grim) analysis of the situation in Guerrero: ¿Por qué el crimen organizado atenta contra la sociedad civil en México? | Internacional | EL PAÃ�S.


Good article. I do read Spanish but for those who don't, if you use Chrome, it will automatically ask if you want any non-English site translated. It's a brutally rough translation and is not authoritative, but professional translators do start with such translations nowadays. Warning, mistakes in meaning can occur but more likely because of the tortured English that results.


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## diablita

citlali said:


> That is not what I am hearing from the people down here. I have not heard one peson who is not outraged by what happened and there ae lots of marches and blocking of roads to protest the massacre.


Not what I'm hearing from the local folks I know in and around Acapulco either.


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## Isla Verde

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Good article. I do read Spanish but for those who don't, if you use Chrome, it will automatically ask if you want any non-English site translated. It's a brutally rough translation and is not authoritative, but professional translators do start with such translations nowadays. Warning, mistakes in meaning can occur but more likely because of the tortured English that results.


I'm a professional translator, and I assure you I don't use computer-generated translations to do my work! They create more problems than they solve.


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## citlali

Can´t imagine using any of these program to come up with a decent translation either. It works better with some languages than others but most of these programs are just awful.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Isla Verde said:


> None of my Mexican friends, in the DF or elsewhere, have expressed sentiments like "they got what they deserved", about the massacre of the normalistas in Iguala. They are horrified, and rightly so, about what has happened. This includes friends in the DF who've had enough of demonstrations and marches that have inconvenienced them from time to time. For forum members who read Spanish well, here's a link to an article from El País, which gives an accurate (and grim) analysis of the situation in Guerrero: ¿Por qué el crimen organizado atenta contra la sociedad civil en México? | Internacional | EL PAÃ�S.


Well, whatever Mexicans of various places are saying about the massacre, if what El Pais says is true about drug gangs forming alliances with local governments throughout Guerrero, Michoacán and Tamaulipas to expand revenue into all sorts of non-drug enterprises, that can have real consequences for expats. In most circumstances, I still think that doing away with expats will be more trouble than we're worth (esos ****** gringos), but there's always the danger of running into something no one should see, maybe what happened to the New York motorcyclist who got waylaid on his way to the World Cup and Brazil. Don't drive at night.


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## Isla Verde

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Well, whatever Mexicans of various places are saying about the massacre, if what El Pais says is true about drug gangs forming alliances with local governments throughout Guerrero, Michoacán and Tamaulipas to expand revenue into all sorts of non-drug enterprises, that can have real consequences for expats. In most circumstances, I still think that doing away with expats will be more trouble than we're worth (esos ****** gringos), but there's always the danger of running into something no one should see, maybe what happened to the New York motorcyclist who got waylaid on his way to the World Cup and Brazil. Don't drive at night.


Frankly, I didn't post the El País article thinking how the horrible situation in Guerrero would affect expats, and this wasn't mentioned at all in the article. I posted it because I'm very concerned about what it means for the future of Mexico.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Isla Verde said:


> Frankly, I didn't post the El País article thinking how the horrible situation in Guerrero would affect expats, and this wasn't mentioned at all in the article. I posted it because I'm very concerned about what it means for the future of Mexico.


Sure, you're right. But this is the expatforum, after all, and I think members might wonder if Iguala would affect them as well. I don't know, but that El Pais article gave an indication.


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## Hound Dog

I think that Isla is right in that, despite the fact that much of Mexico has become anarchic, the massacre in Iguala may enlighten locals to the desperate need for reform. We´ll see. I am not optimistic but tha Iguala massacre was unusual in that so many young people were slaughtered all at once and buried together. An unusual manafestation of Mexico´s ongoing incivility, corruption and widespread, uncontrolled criminality. As someone said to me earlier today, Guerrero is not the poorest and most dangerous state in the unión. I would give that designation to Chiapas where we live much of each year. As this person who lives in Chiapas said to me; the unusual aspect of the Iguala massacre as that so many were slaugehtered en masse and provocatively buried in a mass grave after being grotesquely mutilated and cremated. As this person said to me, people are always disappearing in Chiapas - truly Mexico´s poorest and most ungovernable states but they simply disappear one at a time but just as many people there are salughtered as in Guerrero. The ignorance or purpuseful and determined blindness among of so many normal citizens awakened by an obscene massacre is what should disturb us.

Just last year we drove through Iguala on our way from from Chiapas to Lake Chapala because we had decided to visit Taxco which is only about 30 kilometers from Iguala - an attractive town that impressed us back then, by the way. This is not some hick town back in the boonies; it 
is a stone´s throw from Taxco, one of Mexico´s major tourist attractions and some 100 kilometers from famous Cuernavaca. As I learned growing up in the U.S. Deep South in the 1950s, the rot comes from the gut and is not apparent to casual observers just passing through.

Go ahead and cover your eyes, ears and mouth but the cáncer of Iguala and countless other places humans inhabit across the globe cannot be denied. Maybe we owe those ignorant, thuggish cops a debt of gratitude just as Martin Luther King owed Bull Connor in the 1960s.


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## AlanMexicali

citlali said:


> That is not what I am hearing from the people down here. I have not heard one peson who is not outraged by what happened and there ae lots of marches and blocking of roads to protest the massacre.


I also hear outrage. Possibly someone made up the other reply without talking to anyone.


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## citlali

I believe that the cartels and their money are in many local governments it is just not out in the press.

The states mentioned are just the most obvious ones but you can bet the cartels are infiltrating themselves wherever they can, it is just good business and makes sense..

I am concerned about the future of Mexico as well and so are many Mexicans. Expats are irrelevant in the whole picture and the cartels may or may not look at them for income
.Frankly when there is so much nastiness and corruption going on expats are a drop in the bucket.

There have been a couple of reports of people gettting extorted by armed people at the border. This maybe a couple of isolated incidents or just the beginning of a trend.
Right now other expats are laughing it off but future will tell if expats are begining to be on the radar.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

citlali said:


> I believe that the cartels and their money are in many local governments it is just not out in the press.
> 
> The states mentioned are just the most obvious ones but you can bet the cartels are infiltrating themselves wherever they can, it is just good business and makes sense..
> 
> I am concerned about the future of Mexico as well and so are many Mexicans. Expats are irrelevant in the whole picture and the cartels may or may not look at them for income
> .Frankly when there is so much nastiness and corruption going on expats are a drop in the bucket.
> 
> There have been a couple of reports of people gettting extorted by armed people at the border. This maybe a couple of isolated incidents or just the beginning of a trend.
> Right now other expats are laughing it off but future will tell if expats are begining to be on the radar.


"Expats are irrelevant?" Well, to the violence itself. As I wrote, the drug gangs usually consider messing with expats more trouble than we're worth, but that certainly doesn't mean that what happened in Iguala is irrelevant for expats, and we should only be commenting on what this means for Mexicans. Again this is the expat forum, after all. 

In today's Washington Post article on Iguala, I saw a reader's comment, who claims to have been a regular visitor to Mexico, though you can never be sure, to be very relevant.


"Robert_In_WeHo
5:11 AM EDT [Edited]
With so many countries in the world rife with violence, war and discord, it's unsettling to see just how far Mexico has slid into chaos right on our border. I've traveled extensively throughout Mexico in the past but these days you couldn't pay me to go there because of stories like this one..."

Most travelers will ignore this comment but not all. This could have a long term affect on expats in Mexico - relatives won't come to visit (might not be all a bad thing to some); pool of new expats could shrink, expats already in Mexico could travel much, much less in provinces, etc.

Mass kidnapping of students in Iguala, Mexico, brings outrage and protests - The Washington Post


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## citlali

The pool of new expats has been shrinking for a while and the snowbird population is not as high as it used to be either. 
Construction workers in an expat area like Ajijic are desperate for work and people selling home furnishing are suffereing all signs that the pool of new expats is shrinking.

Houses are not selling weither which wil make getting out for homeowners more difficult no doubt about that.

The shame is that Mexico has an opportunity to increase their tourism as North Africa which is a big European destination is becoming off limit. Mexico could sell their beaches , ruins, culture etc..but news like that of Iguala will counteract any big campaign.

The much bigger question for all of us Mexicans and expats is where is Mexico going?. Can they reverse the trend or continue their descent in hell?


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## vantexan

It's estimated that between one and two million people died in the Mexican Revolution. Considering the size of the population that was a massive blood letting. I guess the question is can an outsider, an expat, choose to live in Mexico without getting caught up in violence? Judging by the many participants on this forum who've lived in Mexico for years, it's certainly possible with good judgement and awareness of local conditions.


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## Hound Dog

_


vantexan said:



It's estimated that between one and two million people died in the Mexican Revolution. Considering the size of the population that was a massive blood letting. I guess the question is can an outsider, an expat, choose to live in Mexico without getting caught up in violence? Judging by the many participants on this forum who've lived in Mexico for years, it's certainly possible with good judgement and awareness of local conditions.

Click to expand...

_Now, Van, Dawg is a South Alabama boy by birth and schooling but I know you are from East Texas and we both know South Alabama and East Texas are both as dangerous as a rattlesnake in the tall grass when you are walking through a field barefooted in July so don´t BS The Dawg. 

We had originally planned to retire to the Colombian Highlands but rejected Colombia in those days (2000) as too unsettled and violent. We chose Mexico instead but I will tell you this without equivocation as one who owns homes in both Jalisco and Chiapas; while I have no intention at present of leaving Mexico today, there is _NO_ chance I would choose to move to this corrupt, out-of-control oligarchy voluntarily the way things are going at this time. 

However, I must admit that I would rather venture into an OXXO in the worst ghetto in Guadalajara at 4:00AM than a 7/11 in downtown Beaumont at that time of the day. People in the U.S. who fear Mexico should look over their shoulders there in Chicago.


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## vantexan

Hound Dog said:


> Now, Van, Dawg is a South Alabama boy by birth and schooling but I know you are from East Texas and we both know South Alabama and East Texas are both as dangerous as a rattlesnake in the tall grass when you are walking through a field barefooted in July so don´t BS The Dawg.
> 
> We had originally planned to retire to the Colombian Highlands but rejected Colombia in those days (2000) as too unsettled and violent. We chose Mexico instead but I will tell you this without equivocation as one who owns homes in both Jalisco and Chiapas; while I have no intention at present of leaving Mexico today, there is _NO_ chance I would choose to move to this corrupt, out-of-control oligarchy voluntarily the way things are going at this time.
> 
> However, I must admit that I would rather venture into an OXXO in the worst ghetto in Guadalajara at 4:00AM than a 7/11 in downtown Beaumont at that time of the day. People in the U.S. who fear Mexico should look over their shoulders there in Chicago.


Maybe Beaumont, but Tyler is reasonably safe. I'm a native Floridian with ancestors from Alabama, Georgia, and Cherokee from Oklahoma. 

So are you saying you literally don't recommend anyone moving to Mexico these days? We found San Miguel to be pretty tranquil last year. I've mentioned Leon, but based on what everyone is saying about it I guess I can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I like very much what I've read about San Luis Potosí, you included. Appears with all the pedestrian only streets in the Centro one could have very nice walks there.


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## Hound Dog

OK, Van:

Perhaps I am being overly negative after the unimaginable Iguala massacre - a place we just drove thrugh last year on our way from Chiapas to Lake Chapala via Taxco. We know from living in San Cristóbal de Las Casas that most really horrible crimes in places all over Mexico are never reported but cerrainly in Chiapas and Guerrero. We get most of our news regarding crime in the San Cristóbal área on local radio stations in Spanish and local indigenous Maya languages and that news never (or hardly ever) makes the national media nor local prominent media unless it is a terrible crime like that in Iguala. In places such as rural Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí State and on and on, people don´t even discuss the news about crimes except with each other normally in whispers as no one can be trusted at all and speaking to the wrong person can get one killed.

What the hell.


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## citlali

yes vantexan, I am recommending that people do not move until the politicians and or cartels get their act together. What is going on is bad news. I am getting really down from hearing about kidnapping and killing of people, these things get to you when it is happening to people you know and you do not see the end or any hope of getting any better.
Imagine how people who have children must feel? Something drastic needs to happen so as an outsider why would you want to be in the middle of it?

You can move in as an expat and bury your head in the sand and live happy for ever after until it happens to you or if you do become part of a community you can hear the horror stories and wait for something to happen to you or someone close. You can also see first hand the politicians not giving a dammed and making grandiloquent speeches to fins out they are part of the scam too.

Your choice but if I knew 13 years ago what I know now I would not have moved here, not matter how nice the climate, no matter how nice some of the people are or how cheap life is. 

Maybe I am being negative because a friend of mine just found her young relative who had been missing since February. He was beatten to death and dump over a clift so was a young woman not related to him... This was not cartel but a local gang who wanted money. They kidnapped the young man and asked for 10 millions pesos afte they killed the kid.. One of the murderer is in jail but the others are still out there and the murderer who is a minor is threatening the family that he wil kill them one at a time when he gets out for going to the MP...nice culture no?

No of this made the news or radio or in print.


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> yes vantexan, I am recommending that people do not move until the politicians and or cartels get their act together. What is going on is bad news. I am getting really down from hearing about kidnapping and killing of people, these things get to you when it is happening to people you know and you do not see the end or any hope of getting any better.
> Imagine how people who have children must feel? Something drastic needs to happen so as an outsider why would you want to be in the middle of it?
> 
> You can move in as an expat and bury your head in the sand and live happy for ever after until it happens to you or if you do become part of a community you can hear the horror stories and wait for something to happen to you or someone close. You can also see first hand the politicians not giving a dammed and making grandiloquent speeches to fins out they are part of the scam too.
> 
> Your choice but if I knew 13 years ago what I know now I would not have moved here, not matter how nice the climate, no matter how nice some of the people are or how cheap life is.
> 
> Maybe I am being negative because a friend of mine just found her young relative who had been missing since February. He was beatten to death and dump over a clift so was a young woman not related to him... This was not cartel but a local gang who wanted money. They kidnapped the young man and asked for 10 millions pesos afte they killed the kid.. One of the murderer is in jail but the others are still out there and the murderer who is a minor is threatening the family that he wil kill them one at a time when he gets out for going to the MP...nice culture no?
> 
> No of this made the news or radio or in print.


This is a real tragedy and happens more often in Mexico than any of us can imagine. Reading about it just added to my gloomy mood, but I'm glad you posted it.


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## citlali

Sorry about the gloom, the sun is shinning and I will feel better tomorrow but sometimes things are 
difficult to comprehend or to live with.


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> Sorry about the gloom, the sun is shinning and I will feel better tomorrow but sometimes things are
> difficult to comprehend or to live with.


The sun isn't shining here today, and I expect the rain to start to fall soon as it's been doing almost daily for some time now. Perhaps my gloomy mood is partly due to overdosing on news about the Iguala tragedy. Time for a cup of tea and a cookie, I think  .


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## citlali

If I was not fighting a nasty bug I would go for something a little stronger!


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> If I was not fighting a nasty bug I would go for something a little stronger!


Not a bad idea!


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## diablita

Isla Verde said:


> This is a real tragedy and happens more often in Mexico than any of us can imagine. Reading about it just added to my gloomy mood, but I'm glad you posted it.


And I agree that what happened to Citlali's friend's nephew was a tragedy but I was not in a gloomy mood and it will not put me in one nor will it make me regret spending the past 17 years of my life here. There is no one in my small circle of friends from the USA who would ever be able to live as I do and that is fine with me. I would not recommend that any of my friends here move to the USA either. Tragedies happen everywhere. One must just keep plodding on and make the best of it or the *******s win.


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## citlali

I do not think so Dablita but you do not come from a country where kidnappings extortion and massacres happen at the rate it is happening in Mexico and neither do I.


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## vantexan

But isn't this akin to the 9/11 attack or the Oklahoma City bombing? Terrible events but they didn't make the rest of the country unsafe. I realize the kidnappings are ongoing, but are expats being grabbed? Might be foolhardy to live near the border or certain other areas but beyond that don't the usual safety tips apply? Don't drive at night, don't flash cash or wear expensive jewelry. Don't walk around with electronics. Don't get drunk in public places. And other common sense measures. Don't y'all drive extensively around central and south Mexico?


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## citlali

I do not equate it to 911, the political sysem is corrupt and broken and the cartels are infiltrating it to take control, it is an internal cancer not an isolated attack coming from the outside.
Kidnapping and killing happen daily wether reported or not . 
Now they are finding that the bodies in the grave are not those of the students, so a bunch of other people disappeared as well andt no one seemed to have been missing them, at least officially. 
No doubt the students will be found in some other grave nearby, one thing we can count on is that they are dead. 

When the 18 innocent people in the Chapala area were kidnapped and killed it was for some quota a cartel wanted to make..In Chapala a cop or 2 were involved in the kidanapping and killing of the 2 women teachers, the police was also involve in turning some young mean to a cartel to be executed. The young man escape and was able to tell his story..

If you think that a country where a lot of the police is corrupted by cartels is safe then you do not understand what the situation is.

You can very well mind your own business and never have problems but does that mean the country is safe? Not in my book.

We drive a lot between Chiapas and Guadalajara we drove to Iguala last year and nothing happened to us, do that make Iguala safe?
For us it was but obviously not for everyone. We were not demonstrating or attacking the system so we went under the radar but I would not say driving in an area like this is safe just because we did it or many other people did.


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## vantexan

You know way more about it than I do but given most Mexicans aren't involved in the violence wouldn't we be punishing them to not come? Is it foolhardy to move to Mexico? If I choose to rent a nice room in a nice home and go about my business is it inevitable that something bad will happen to me or is it highly unlikely?


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## citlali

I am just giving my opinion. Each person is free to do what they wish and yes they probably will be living here without any problems but there is no guaranty no matter what you do and that is true anywhere.


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## diablita

"but there is no guaranty no matter what you do and that is true anywhere."

Those are your words so quit chastising those of us who are content here.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Isla Verde said:


> I'm a professional translator, and I assure you I don't use computer-generated translations to do my work! They create more problems than they solve.


I was referring to Washington DC-based professional translators who work for international organizations and U.S. gov't who I knew. They said that the programs gave them just the basis to start,and they set about correcting the flow and when necessary, the meaning, but they said it cut their translation time in half or even more, crude as the computer-generated translation is.


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## GARYJ65

Good morning to you all!
Wow, I'm Reading the last postings!
First of all, Citlali is right about many things, and all of you are right too

Whether or not september 11th was an outside or inside job, it happened. And in the US many nasty things happen on a daily basis, some make the news, some not.
People walking into a Mc Donalds or a movie theater and shooting others, racial abuses, kidnappings, rapes, etc.
What about Europe? Neonazis in Germany and France, crime, rapes, etc. etc etc.
Africa? Ebola, racial crimes, rapes, murders, etc, etc, etc

Thing here is... it happens everywhere! If we could come up with a safe place in the world where we could co living quiet and happy lives, let's do it! 

Corruption, crime, robberies, etc. they are EVERYWHERE, if we want to discuss this until the end of the world and come up with numbers and statistics to determine which Country sucks the most and where did we get our sources, I quit, that's a never ending task.

Let's try to do something to change things WHERE WE LIVE, not everything is lost, we are not doomed, it's not like those films where civilization as we know it is about to perish.

Mexico is not free of guilt, but it is not, by any means, where corruption rules, or where all the terrible events occur. It is a Country like any other, where you can live happy or get mugged, get killed , get sick or get better.....

Move to Mexico any time, if you like it, if you are afraid of it, then stay where you are, it is not really a problem. The real problem, once again, would be to find the perfect place


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## Hound Dog

[_QUOTE=vantexan;5469185]But isn't this akin to the 9/11 attack or the Oklahoma City bombing? Terrible events but they didn't make the rest of the country unsafe. I realize the kidnappings are ongoing, but are expats being grabbed? Might be foolhardy to live near the border or certain other areas but beyond that don't the usual safety tips apply? Don't drive at night, don't flash cash or wear expensive jewelry. Don't walk around with electronics. Don't get drunk in public places. And other common sense measures. *Don't y'all drive extensively around central and south Mexico?[/QUOTE]*_

This comment was addressed to Citlali but since vantexan is from East Texas and I from Alabama originally, I took the use of the contraction "yáll" to include me since, unlike many Yankee readers, I understand that the contraction "yáll" always refers to two or more people so I feel that I am at least indirectly involved in the inquiry and, thus, privileged to add my two centavos worth. 

Yes, van, we drive extensively in Central and Southern Mexico, mostly in the deep south of the country and live in Highland Chiapas much of each year just a couple of hours or so from the Guatemala border. 

I must admit that, during all that extensive road travel mainly in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatan, Quintana Roo and Campeche with some road travel also in Guerrero and Michoacan; we have really experienced no serious problems in any of those places. In fact, one of us traveled overland down into Guatemala and Honduras with no significant problems.

Some of that road travel includes travel into very remote áreas, especially in Chiapas, Oaxaca and the Yucatán Peninsula and still, to date, no _significant _problems. I´ll admit that we have occasionally come across locally intense and somewhat unsettling problems in certain municipalities, including, at times, road blocks requiring negotiations or payments of informal tolls to proceed but we have survived them all so far by being humble and diplomatic and/or by paying modest passage fees to, shall we say, townspeople along the way irritated at impositions of authority for which we were not responsible. 

We have found, over the past eight years, Southern Mexico to be charming and often stunningly beautiful if, at times, a bit edgy. Other expats reading this should not be hesitant to drive there but should always remember they are guests and act accordingly but never impatiently or arrogantly.

I´ll always remember a time when we found ourselves, along with many others, delayed by a roadblock imposed by local villagers near Ocosingo, Chiapas on the San Cristóbal-Palenque Highway who were irritated that the local president of the governing municipality had failed to construct a basketball court for local youth even though he had promised to do so if all the village voters voted for him which they did and then he reneged on that promise. The men of the village decided to raise the funds to build the basketball court by instituting a roadblock with required tolls sufficient over time to pay for the construction. Certain representatives of the village blocked that main (federal) highway and demanded tolls while what appeared to be hundreds of men observed the action clearly with the intent of enforcing the tolls. There was this woman in front of us with Veracruz license plates who initially refused to pay the rather modest toll and was told in no uncertain terms that she could either pay or turn around and return to San Cristóbal - a two hour drive from that point. Well, there were no alternative roads to Palenque from that point and the large crowd appeared to be menacing so she paid that small toll as she had no choice and the traffic moved on to Palenque some three hours distant. 

Of course, the real purpose of that village´s highway obstruction was to intimidate the president of the municipality and his cohorts so, a couple of days later when we returned to San Cristóbal, no problem and the new basketball court, an important facility in Chiapas for many reasons, was, no doubt, soon to be constructed. The Chiapas government tries not to get involved in these matters at any cost. You want trouble-free passage down there then pay your toll (if you are offered the opportunity) and move on. There have been other times when passage through was not even an option and I remember heading back to Villahermosa adding eight hours to a drive to San Cristóbal and I was not about to argue my case with anyone at that roadblock.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Protestors burn 2 govt buildings, damage others, in Chilpancingo, capital of Guerrero state where Iguala is located.

Spanish version from El Universal
El Universal - Nación - Guerrero: queman Palacio de Gobierno

English version, ABC
Protesters Burn State Building in Southern Mexico - ABC News


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## GARYJ65

Of course they burnt the government building!
What would we do if our friends or relatives were missing?
Remember the watts riot?


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## Longford

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Protestors burn 2 govt buildings, damage others, in Chilpancingo, capital of Guerrero state where Iguala is located.


I wouldn't place too much significance on what "students" in Chilpancingo do. It's a typically radical-left group there which frequently protests, hijacks busses, blocks federal highways, and otherwise do things for a little "fun" and extortion. Yes, burnign is an elevated event, but I believe it was primarily an opportunity to play around. In many state universities in Mexico the "students" aren't much different than life-long students in the Middle East. There are not enough jobs for people so they study, seemingly forever. An interesting twist to what happened in Iguala is that it was a leftist-PRD Mayor/administration which is alleged to have been involved in the disappearances. The PRD has long prided itself as the left lof the left, the savior of the people, the only true representative of the downtrodden, oppressed ... and students. The party leaders are tripping over one another trying to shuck and jive so as not to be tainted by what's apparently happened there.


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## Longford

GARYJ65 said:


> Remember the watts riot?


Honestly, I think you should look for another, more relevant comparison.


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## Hound Dog

_


GARYJ65 said:



Of course they burnt the government building!
What would we do if our friends or relatives were missing?
Remember the watts riot?

Click to expand...

_As one might imagine, after they burned the government building in Chilpanzingo including countless bureaucratic papers, nothing of value was found missing including any illegal Central American immigrant toilet cleaners on the late night shift not known to have even been there in the first place.

Sincé you mentioned the Watts riots, I am reminded of when I first drove to Los Angeles in the 1960s thinking I, like Chuck Berry, was escaping to the promised land from the U.S. South. This was just after the devastating Watts riots and one was supposed to, as possible, drive around Watts to get to Santa Monica where I was headed - pleased to get to the promised land and, in my mind, away from southeastern U.S. racism. About a week later, I found a modest apartment in the town of Hermosa Beach on the Pacific just south of Santa Monica and rented it. The landlord, without any solicitation on my part, informed me that I needn´t worry about "black folks" coming into Hermosa Beach to start trouble because the Hermosa Beach pólice department was waiting there at the Torrance city limits to screen any "*******" who might attempt to enter the city.

Reminds me of Southern Mexico where today, some 50 years later, dark-skinned people who might (or might not) be from Central America are still viewed with alarm by local cops on the highways heading north. Some things just don´t change.


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## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> Honestly, I think you should look for another, more relevant comparison.


1992 Los Angeles riot:

From Wikipedia: "The riot was first started in South Central Los Angeles and then eventually spread out into other areas over a six-day period within the Los Angeles metropolitan area in California beginning in April 1992. The riots started on April 29 after a trial jury acquitted four Los Angeles Police Department officers of assault and use of excessive force. The mostly white officers were videotaped beating Rodney King, an African-American man, following a high-speed police pursuit. Thousands of people throughout the metropolitan area in Los Angeles rioted over six days following the announcement of the verdict.

Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred during the riots, and estimates of property damages topped one billion dollars. The rioting ended after soldiers from the California Army National Guard, the 7th Infantry Division, and Marines from 1st Marine Division were called in to stop the rioting when the local police could not handle the situation. In total, 53 people were killed during the riots and over 2,000 people were injured." :juggle:


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## GARYJ65

I really don't think I have to look for a more relevant comparison.
Just wanted to point out the fact that there are riots and disturbances everywhere and at anytime 

Nothing to do with government stability or expats


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## citlali

Well the mayor in Iguala has fled and the one in Copala was arrested so I would say you cannot compare with the situation in the States but I agree riots are riots and they can happen anywhere..


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## Hound Dog

Longford said:


> I wouldn't place too much significance on what "students" in Chilpancingo do. It's a typically radical-left group there which frequently protests, hijacks busses, blocks federal highways, and otherwise do things for a little "fun" and extortion. Yes, burnign is an elevated event, but I believe it was primarily an opportunity to play around. In many state universities in Mexico the "students" aren't much different than life-long students in the Middle East. There are not enough jobs for people so they study, seemingly forever. An interesting twist to what happened in Iguala is that it was a leftist-PRD Mayor/administration which is alleged to have been involved in the disappearances. The PRD has long prided itself as the left lof the left, the savior of the people, the only true representative of the downtrodden, oppressed ... and students. The party leaders are tripping over one another trying to shuck and jive so as not to be tainted by what's apparently happened there.


Middle Eastern students most likely of Arab descent, poverty stricken students in rural teacher´s colleges in Guerrero prone to disruptive behavior (long understoood as a civil safety valve in Mexico) and "shuck and jive" politicians. Quite the discerning observation from far-flung Chicago defining the bases of political insurrection in Mexico. For a minute there I thought I was back in Birmingham and you were defining Bull Connor versus the SCLC´s Children´s Crusade circa the mid-1960s. 

It´s amazing how physical distance improves clarity of thought. I was just in Iguala and remain confused.


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## Longford

It's been disclosed, from what I'm reading today ... that none of the bodies of the missing students has been found yet. The "mass graves" which were uncovered were of other victims of crime. But, not many people express concern for those dead. It was like the 20+ tourists from Michoacan who where kidnapped then executed in Acapulco maybe 5 years ago. Not too much uproar about that except the terror felt by the fam ilies of those killed. Nor about the hundreds of disappeared women up in Juarez area. There's been so much horrific violence in Mexico this past decade+ that unless someone you loved was victimized, the incidents are forgotten.

About the violence in Chilpancingo: let's not convince ourselves "students" were behind that. There's a group of anarchists/domestic terrorists in Mexico who look for every and any opportunity to provoke/initiate such events. We saw that in Oaxaca a decade or so ago when the city was torn apart by the "student protests" which were really mastermined by domestic terrorists and which almost wiped-out the city's tourism industry. My view is that those who incite the violent reactions aren't the same people looking for answers to what happened.


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## Hound Dog

_


Longford said:



It's been disclosed, from what I'm reading today ... that none of the bodies of the missing students has been found yet. The "mass graves" which were uncovered were of other victims of crime. But, not many people express concern for those dead. It was like the 20+ tourists from Michoacan who where kidnapped then executed in Acapulco maybe 5 years ago. Not too much uproar about that except the terror felt by the fam ilies of those killed. Nor about the hundreds of disappeared women up in Juarez area. There's been so much horrific violence in Mexico this past decade+ that unless someone you loved was victimized, the incidents are forgotten.

About the violence in Chilpancingo: let's not convince ourselves "students" were behind that. There's a group of anarchists/domestic terrorists in Mexico who look for every and any opportunity to provoke/initiate such events. * We saw that in Oaxaca a decade or so ago when the city was torn apart by the "student protests" which were really mastermined by domestic terrorists and which almost wiped-out the city's tourism industry. My view is that those who incite the violent reactions aren't the same people looking for answers to what happene*d.

Click to expand...

_Interesting how these coincidences keep occurring. A decade "or so" ago, we arrived in Oaxaca City as tourists when the city was "_torn apart by student protests which were really masterminded by domestic terrorists and which almost wiped-out the city´s tourism industry." _We were a bit inconvenienced by those protests since we, who had driven up from San Cristóbal de Las Casas, couldn´t access our favorite hotel adjacent to Oaxaca City´s zocalo and had to stay in a hotel several blocks distant which turned out to be a nice place to stay and, after all, that touristy zocalo is a vastly overrated cheesy tourist attraction filled with foreigners anxious to waste mioney in overpriced two-bit tourist reastaurants and bars., Guess what; we have continued to return to Oaxaca City often over the past decade as we will next month and the place, including the phoney "zocalo" is still choc-a-bloc with tourists from all over the world. Personally, I think that tourists are drawn by civil disorder in places like Oaxaca City. Otherwise they would all head for Peoria. Of course, if they desired true civil disorder, they could all head for Chicago but that hell-hole takes true guts to visit. 

We live in Southern Mexico and travel about there constantly and inquisitively. We´ll try not to preach about the desolate plains of Illinois in which, by the way, Hound Dog spent much time staring off into the distance seeking undefined recreational opportunities beyond that place.


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## citlali

My husband forgets we were in Oaxaca at our favorite hotel when the trouble started and most of the people we saw, the ones sleeping on the street were maestros for sure.
We had to leave the hotel after two days as Oaxaca has a water problem and the maestros did not let the water truck near the zocalo so we ran out of water so we took a trip and stayed in the pueblos malcomunados and then stayed out of the center.
Many of the maestros came from the Ithsmus but they also were from all over the place.

Tourism suffered for a while and hotels had great prices but everything went back to normal whe the troubles stopped.


What is amazing to me about Iguala is that there is no big outcry about the 28 bodies found and who knows how many more since they found more graves.. Twenty eight families must be missing someone , where are those families or were they all from a different gang or from some oposition and everyone is too scared to claim kinship?
This whole scene is too strange, is everyone numb from all these murders' Scared? 
You would think someone in the press would ask "who were these people?
It is a twighlight zone IMO, people only seem to be able to focus on the latest..

Yes they are agitators in every one of these events but also people looking for answers and a whole bunch of angry and frustrated people people.


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## Longford

citlali said:


> My husband forgets ...


[cut]



> Tourism suffered for a while and hotels had great prices but everything went back to normal whe the troubles stopped.


Respectfully ... I have to say you haven't a clue what you're talking about. Take the time to re-read the history of what happened.



> What is amazing to me about Iguala is that there is no big outcry about the 28 bodies found and who knows how many more since they found more graves.


Hundreds of mass graves have been uncovered in Mexico in the past 5-10 years. And then there are the thousands of people never accounted for during this war. 



> This whole scene is too strange, is everyone numb from all these murders' Scared?


Look how easily/quickly the disappearance of hundreds of women in the North was ignored, also. The families grieve ... and they're about the only ones that do. Many people just don't pay attention to current events for varying reasons. 



> You would think someone in the press would ask "who were these people?


When the press askes the question, as have some private bloggers ... they're executed, beheaded, hung from bridges ... with notes attached to them ... warning to leave such issues alone. Thee's a tremendous amount of self-imposed censorship taking place in Mexico right now. To report on these things can mean loss of life.



> It is a twighlight zone IMO, people only seem to be able to focus on the latest.


Yes, surreal. Not only are lots of Mexicans unaware/uninterested ... most expats are probably oblivious to the extent of what's happening.



> Yes they are agitators in every one of these events but also people looking for answers and a whole bunch of angry and frustrated people people.


Certainly, there are well-meaning, honest and troubled people participating in demonstratons. However, dont' think for a minute that the full-time agitators aren't in the forefront of tossing the Molotov Cocktails. As Dorothy once said (in the movie), _I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!_


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## citlali

We spend a lot of time in Oaxaca and have a family who adopted us there and we have a house there available any time we go so we hear what the locals have to say.
At the time we stayed with a woman in the city who had a couple of hotelsl and her son owned a hotel as well so we know first hand what happened to businesses there , no need to "reread history" we also know how much the lack of tourism lasted. We also heard plenty from he staff who was affeced by the maestros strikes. That year if I remember correcly he Guelaguetza was cancelled.
Many people are totally fed up with the yearly May strikes from the Mastros as well.

Our friends all have businesses affeced by tourism or the lack of.... so not sure what we are supposed to read, we hear about it first hand.


I am well aware of all these other trouble places but I am speaking of this specific situation in Iguala and I have yet to hear one question about the id of the people found in the mass grave from people around here . I guess everyone assumes they were narcs so it does not concern them.


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## Hound Dog

Deleted by poster.


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## Justina

Citlali, people are scared and try to ignore what is happening around them. La Jornada has been in the front line of reports and even that paper, when it is discussing 'sensitive areas', does not give the names of the reporters anymore. Mexico beats the 'record' at the moment for murdered journalists.
It is certainly worrying that the students have still not been found, but there have been mass graves up north of Central Americans, so no reason not to assume that the latest murdered are from outside Mexico. Why is another question..


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## Longford

citlali said:


> I am well aware of all these other trouble places but I am speaking of this specific situation in Iguala and I have yet to hear one question about the id of the people found in the mass grave from people around here . I guess everyone assumes they were narcs so it does not concern them.


I believe people are afraid, to ask too many questions ... unless _one of their own_ has been victimized. If they show too much interest they might become targets of violence as well. One takes care of her/himself, first. Yes, I believe there's a lot of fear in many of these communities. I also believe many, all to many "innocent" people have been killed and their deaths have been listed in the report columns which might be marked "narco."

Not a story of death, but I returned to my apartment in Mexico City from a Semana Santa vacation one year to find my front door off its hinges and many of my personal possessions stolen. i wondered how this could happen when there were at least three or four neighbors so close to my apartment. I spoke to a couple of the neighbors about what happened. They said they were sorry for my loss, and that they had witnessed the break-in/robbery from across the walk (it's a gated apartment complex in Centro Historico with several floors of apartments located close to one another with outdoor entries). They said they didn't want to become involved, out of fear the persons robbing my apartment would come back to rob them. And when I asked why they didn't simply call the police anonomyously ... they said the burglars looked like policemen and/or that they didn't trust the police because the police were thieves as well. They really were shamed by their inaction and hearing their stories I couldn't really be angry with them. In many ways after the incident they went out of their way to be kind to me. The guilt ran deep, but (their) family and (their) home came first.


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## Justina

As a ps to what I wrote, I too visited Oaxaca about ten years ago with my daughter and her French friend who had come to visit us in Mexico and I could see the surprise in her face as we wandered around the Zocalo and we explained that they were teachers on strike. They just looked appalling, slobs lying around. But then they also did it in the DF for years. God help the kids.


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## Isla Verde

Justina said:


> As a ps to what I wrote, I too visited Oaxaca about ten years ago with my daughter and her French friend who had come to visit us in Mexico and I could see the surprise in her face as we wandered around the Zocalo and we explained that they were teachers on strike. They just looked appalling, slobs lying around. But then they also did it in the DF for years. God help the kids.


A lot of these so-called teachers are just thugs hired by the teachers union to participate in marches and sit-ins and so on.


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## Justina

*Thugs*



Isla Verde said:


> A lot of these so-called teachers are just thugs hired by the teachers union to participate in marches and sit-ins and so on.


Yes, perhaps Isla, but what does that say about the union?


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## citlali

Same thing happened in DF last year. It was pretty appalling. I stayed a block or so from the Zocala and one night coming back I intended to walk through rather than around..what a stinking mess that was, I gave up and went around..
People wether scared or not talk, they mostly whisper but they talk . I do not hear much about it in Chiapas. We hear fom various groups but not from people I know.

I am not assuming people in the mass graves are from outside of Mexico at all. I am assuming they are from Iguala or close by..no need to come from outside of Mexico to get killed..

I helped a friend loooking for her son, and went to the MP with her while the other son was checking the morgues. Also went to various place trying to get information and went around the neighborhood asking questions , people did talk , actually people tried to help when her son was kidnapped but then the kidnappers had guns so that was it.

Months later a neighbor called her to tell her who had killed the son (he was involved) and the young man said he wanted immunity before he would talk to the MP. My friend hung up so now she knows she lives next door to one of the murderers and can say nothing for fear the bad guys would hurt her grand-kids.

We know how paranoid people get, we were warned not to associated with our friend as the murderers could come and kill everyone. We do not have any kid so at leeast that was a plus..


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## Isla Verde

Justina said:


> Yes, perhaps Isla, but what does that say about the union?


That it's a "mafia" like so many unions of its type in Mexico. It pains me to say that about a teachers union since I belonged to one when I was working in the States.


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## Longford

Justina said:


> As a ps to what I wrote, I too visited Oaxaca about ten years ago with my daughter and her French friend who had come to visit us in Mexico and I could see the surprise in her face as we wandered around the Zocalo and we explained that they were teachers on strike. They just looked appalling, slobs lying around. But then they also did it in the DF for years. God help the kids.


I believe it's an insult to teachers, generally, to refer to that gang of imposters in Oaxaca as such (teachers). Largely, they're said by people who know to be unqualified, unfit to hold teaching jobs. The union which represents them is as corrupt as any organization in Mexico. Such organizations hire gangs to do the roughing up / gangster activities. 

During the massive violence in approx. 2006 which occurred at the beginning of a teacher's protest/strike was organized primarily by the terrorists who had no legitimate reason to be in Oaxaca other than to initiate violence. Local residents and tourists were attacked (more than 100 mochillas and other travel bags with identification of tourists who had been victimized were recovered), several hotels were firebombed while tourists were in their rooms (the Camino Real, several times), streets were blockaded, commercial businesses were firebombed and required to pay extorsion, many people who lived there (including some expats) fled for other cities as the troubles lasted for months. RPGs were fired into crowds and at police, by the terrorists. 

Anyone who might portray what happened lightheartedly or as just some sort of legitimate civil protest or deny the occurrence of the violence and its seriousness at the time has, IMO, been smoking that funny stuff.  The events tore-apart the tourism industry and many tourism-related businesses failed during the period. Yes, with massive government investment in the promotion of tourism for Oaxaca has brought the industry back. But no thanks to those who continue to try to tear it apart to further their political or perverted beliefs.

Iguala, Chilpancingo ... they're not on the travel itinerary of many foreign, non-Mexican tourists. Less violent demonstrations in Chilpancingo and the blocking of highways, hijacking of busses and minor extorsion of motorists and pedestrians is commonplace in that part of Guerrero. This is just another nusiance to the residents in these communities. With the added difference: the assumption is that 40+ people may have lost their lives, and the bodies of scores of others are being discovered.


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## citlali

Sorry Longford but many were teachers, many came from the Tehuantepec and Juchitan area. It is a troublesome uinion that s radicalized and has many anarchists but many of them are teachers like it or not.

Ido not think the Camino Realwas firebombed but there was a rumor that the beloved governor was going to have a press conference or some kind of a meeting at the Camino Real and the hotel was stormed by the students and maestros and a shoot out happened with the police. There was some damaged done to the hotel. If I remember correctly they even tried to set fire in a room but that was quickly controlled. 

By that time it got pretty nasty in Oaxaca.

Just ike any large event bad elements infiltrate the crowds and pilfrage the place and cause all kinds of problem but do not blame all the teachers for that.
Both in Chiapas and Oaxaca and probably in Guerrero and Mexico some anarchists get in the middle and cause problems for the sake of distabilizing a place and have a good time and some dumb young people get caught in that crowd and just like prey animals join in for fun. Humans are a sad bunch .

The teachers were on strike for a very long time, it was a real shame for the kids wo missed just about half the year.

After that the government workers and government moved out of the Zocalo in order to remove demonstrations from the center but apparently, it did not work and the demonstrations are still taking place there just to make sure the press see them and talk about them.


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> Just ike any large event bad elements infiltrate the crowds and pilfrage the place and cause all kinds of problem but do not blame all the teachers for that.
> Both in Chiapas and Oaxaca and probably in Guerrero and Mexico some anarchists get in the middle and cause problems for the sake of distabilizing a place and have a good time and some dumb young people get caught in that crowd and just like prey animals join in for fun. Humans are a sad bunch .


And just what do the anarchists and bad elements hope to accomplish with their violence?


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## TundraGreen

Isla Verde said:


> And just what do the anarchists and bad elements hope to accomplish with their violence?


Actually 'Anarchists feel it is inappropriate to use anarchy to mean “a state of chaos or confusion”. However, this has historically been a common use of the word.'

I think there are people that take advantage of any political protest to create "a state of chaos or confusion" or to loot just because they can. They don't have any other objective.


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## Longford

Isla Verde said:


> And just what do the anarchists and bad elements hope to accomplish with their violence?


I don't know, maybe "anarchy" and "anarchists" aren't the appropriate descriptions. But there are anarchists amongst these demonstrators. What the domestic terrorists do is similar to what we'd see certain elements of hardcore demonstrators do in the USA in the 1960s: they'd provoke violence, hope to see the authorities or someone else (including themselves) cause serious property damage and harm to individuals with the hope/intention of having the "masses" rise up and overthrow the governing authority ... be the authority university administrators, local, state or federal governments. And then ... there are individuals who get satisfaction, sick as it may seem, seeing individuals killed or badly injured if that happens ... so that they can use the tragedies in some way to further their perverted ideological agenda.

As for Oaxaca: no amount of attempted historical revisionism to fit someone's personal ideology doesn't change the facts of what happened thee in the mid 2000s. The record is very clear.

As for Chilpancingo: IMO, the "students" aren't worthy of my respect, nor are the terrorists who burned the buildings. A large demonstration has been scheduled for this coming Friday in Acapulco, by "teachers" and "students" from throughout the state. Let's see what happens.

And in Iguala: Reports have said policemen alleged to have been involved in the disappearance of 40+ students have been "talking." However, whatever they've said hasn't led federal authorities to the bodies. I find that strange. Also strange is the report that the leader of one of the narco terrorist groups in Iguala took his own life rather than be apprehended. And .. also in the strange category: the Mayor of Iguala and his wife continue to be "missing."

Bienvenido a Mexico!


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## citlali

If the students are not worth of your respect why do you even care if they were kidnappe and killed ? It woud seems that you should be happy to have less students since they are not worth your respect or are only talking about live students?

The news on tv said that the students may have been taken to to a nearby town called Cocula and the whole police force was arrested .( 25).


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## Longford

> Tixtla, Mexico — With its murals of Che Guevara and Karl Marx and painted slogans about revolution, the rural teachers college in Tixtla, Mexico, seems like a throwback in time.
> 
> The college calls itself a cradle of revolutionaries, and students indeed occasionally take to the streets, even hijacking buses and vandalizing buildings.


The Christian Science Monitor featured a background article on the school the students in question attend in its October 12, 2014 online edition. I think the article helps to generally fill-out the stories of the lives of most if not all of the students involved in the confrontation in Iguala and provides some historical perspective on the school they attend.

There are two incidents under investigation: the first is the alleged hijacking of busses by the students which attend school a long distance away from Iguala, and an armed response in which persons were killed during the confrontation. Then there is the scores of missing students, about which we know very little (including whether they are alive or dead or their whereabouts).


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## Longford

> Mario, who asked that his real name not be used in this story, is a first-year student at the Raul Isidro Burgos Ayotzinapa Normal School, in the volatile southern state of Guerrero. It is the only all-male boarding school among nine rural teachers colleges in the state, the only one where the students say they run the place, not the professors.


What follows is a link to another online article which gives some background on the teachers college, its operation/students and interviews with some of the student participants on the night in question in Iguala:

Survivors describe police attack in Mexico


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## citlali

We saw the school on tv a couple of days ago. The conditions in that school are appalling. So the students run the school , they take over buses like many others in the country, last time we drove back from Chiapas students( Normalistas) had taken over a bus on the autopista and were collecting tolls at the toll booth, that is not an automatic death sentence in my book.
Students in Chiapas do the same thing as well, it seems to be a tradition in Mexico.
So they are Marxists not a death sentence either, they are kids, they will get over it. 

By the way it is still not clear why the police did what they did. They set out to massare the kids but why?

What the police did is outrageaous, they are a bunch of thugs and criminals , they all should go to jail. It is truly disgusting.


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## Longford

Unrelated, but the quote/story below illustrates the scope of the problem in Mexico. Mass graves, wholesale executions, kidnappings ... people become insensitive after a while.



> At least 21 bodies have been recovered from a sewage canal in Ecatepec, Mexico State, just outside of Mexico City. ... From June 1 to September 30, 2014 authorities drained the canal, uncovering the bodies, which were of both genders, many between the ages of 14 and 18. ... The move to drain the canal comes after relatives seeking the (dis)appearance of 40 women, mostly minors, have been demanding more action by the authorities to find their missing loved ones.


Source: Borderland Beat: Dozens of Bodies Found in Sewage Canal Outside Mexico City - More Femicide in Mexico State?


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## terrybahena

Longford said:


> What follows is a link to another online article which gives some background on the teachers college, its operation/students and interviews with some of the student participants on the night in question in Iguala:
> 
> Survivors describe police attack in Mexico


Pretty interesting article....I had to re read it and some parts more than twice.So complicated. Tragic. Not new news to Mexico but tragic all the same. Some of the demonstrations scheduled are less than an hour from our place (sched in Cruz Grande). We are now having to think really hard about our trip....to take it? And by what route. Our tiny town is ok, but to get there....maybe south ti Oaxaca after Michoacan, then up...don't want to borrow trouble...


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## Longford

As for getting to Copala/Playa Ventura: it's commonplace for there to be student take-over of the toll booth near Chilpancingo on the Autopista del Sol between Mexico City and Acapulco. Also, too, it's commonplace for there to be civil demonstrations by residents of some of the communities along Hwy. 200 between San Marcos and Copala. Cruz Grande is, as you know, in the middle of that stretch of Hwy. 200 from Acapulco. I don't know if there's a way to avoid any demonstrations on the Autopista. As for Hwy. 200 blockages, I don't know if there will be any which are student-demonstration type. The community blockages typically last from a couple hours to a half-day and there are oftentimes work-arounds. Depending upon when you'd be making a trip to Playa Ventura, the best advice may be to monitor online editions of newspapers in the Costa Chica, particularly the ones in Acapulco which are likely to report on scheduled/anticipated demonstrations. Traveling Hwy. 200 from Michoacán through Acapulco presents some varying security risks of its own - unrelated to the student demonstration issues.


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## Longford

An interesting statistic, regarding persons who have _disappeared _in Mexico:



> A total of 8,334 people have disappeared in Mexico during the first 21 months of President Enrique Peña’s mandate, according to Mexican newspaper Reforma, which analyzed government data.


Source: More than 8,000 People Have Disappeared in Mexico During Peña's Term

I suspect the number is higher ... including the students who were in Iguala and still have not been located.


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## citlali

Considering they are finding mass graves , nobody had ever heard about, I would guess they have no clue how many people are disappearing nor do they really care to know.


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## cscscs007

The sad thing about all of this is the persons responsible for this have no regard for human life and view it as dispensable to get what they want. I personally think that the only thing these criminals will understand is when the common person gets tired of looking the other way and responds back with violence. Only then will these thugs will understand they have gone too far, when they themselves are being dragged out of their homes and suffer the same fate as the many others whom they disposed of. I believe the saying is "an eye for an eye."

Then Mexico will be able to turn the page to the next chapter where this type of violence will not be tolerated. I just don't see that happening with Mr. President Pena Nieto in office. Hopefully the violence ends soon. 

This is my opinion on it.


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## citlali

I do not believe that answering with violence is the answer. They live and thrive with the violence and they are being atacked and the other gangs are fighting them, that does not stop anything. This all cycle of violence just bring more violence , read about the dark ages in Europe now that was really nasty..
Humans seem to go in cyccles and we are going through an extremely violent cycle, this too will pass one of these day, he question is when? Maybe not in our life time but it will get better after it hit bottom.


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## TundraGreen

cscscs007 said:


> … I personally think that the only thing these criminals will understand is when the common person gets tired of looking the other way and responds back with violence. Only then will these thugs will understand they have gone too far, when they themselves are being dragged out of their homes and suffer the same fate as the many others whom they disposed of. I believe the saying is "an eye for an eye."…


They already live a life where many of them suffer the same fate they are inflicting on others. Many are killed in turf wars between gangs or in fights with the military. As long as there is a market and huge amounts of money in the activity, it is going to continue. The best we can hope for is that it moves somewhere else, just as it left Columbia and came to Mexico.


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## Isla Verde

TundraGreen said:


> They already live a life where many of them suffer the same fate they are inflicting on others. Many are killed in turf wars between gangs or in fights with the military. As long as there is a market and huge amounts of money in the activity, it is going to continue. The best we can hope for is that it moves somewhere else, just as it left Columbia and came to Mexico.


I am not a violent person and don't believe that violence solves anything in the end, but sometimes I find myself thinking, let them kill themselves off one by one, and that will put an end to the misery that Mexico is going through right now.


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## citlali

I agree, I feel like I could slowly roast some of the people over a pit , it would make me feel better but that would not solve anything.


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## vantexan

Isla Verde said:


> I am not a violent person and don't believe that violence solves anything in the end, but sometimes I find myself thinking, let them kill themselves off one by one, and that will put an end to the misery that Mexico is going through right now.


Probably an endless supply of people willing to fill the vacuum left by those killed. I worked with a guy in Eagle Pass, TX, 25 years old with a wife and baby. Really good fellow who was desperate to find work. Told me he grew up with guys who were in the cartels. They were trying to get him to join but he said it was his wife who kept him out. Luckily a job with the company we work for came open. Had he been single he'd have been smuggling drugs and possibly killing others.


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## citlali

yes vantexan and he probably would be dead or soon to be killed as well. It is great that he scaped that life.


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> yes vantexan and he probably would be dead or soon to be killed as well. It is great that he scaped that life.


I agree!


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## Longford

> The Mexican government announced rewards Monday of 1.5 million pesos ($111,000) for information on 43 students from a rural teachers’ college who have been missing since Sept. 26, and on their abductors or killers.


Source: Mexico offers rewards for missing students - SFGate

Not much of a "reward", IMO. The Federal government probably spent more on advertising the reward (in full-page newspaper advertisements, and elsewhere) than the amount it's offering for information. Then again, anyone who does cooperate by providing information placces themselves and their families at risk of retribution (i.e., death).


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Longford said:


> Source: Mexico offers rewards for missing students - SFGate
> 
> Not much of a "reward", IMO. The Federal government probably spent more on advertising the reward (in full-page newspaper advertisements, and elsewhere) than the amount it's offering for information. Then again, anyone who does cooperate by providing information placces themselves and their families at risk of retribution (i.e., death).


So, the gov't has arrested 50 people in the search for the students, but it says it still has no information on the their whereabouts? Strange that interviews with those 50 suspects, conducted as we all know in strict adherence to Mexican human rights guidelines, turned up nothing.


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## cscscs007

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Strange that interviews with those 50 suspects, conducted as we all know in strict adherence to Mexican human rights guidelines, turned up nothing.


This one got a chuckle from me.


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## Longford

I know and understand how easily we can be critical of law enforcement and the criminal justice/judiciary system in Mexico (who, me? ) However, I also understand that 1) in a community such as Iguala the best and brightest individuals aren't typically the ones who work in the police department, and 2) the criminal organizations/drug cartels routinely kill police and the family members of police in many communities when the police don't accept the bribes, don't do as told, etc. Also, too, I know that citizens who blog about the criminal organizations/cartels (and journalists) are oftentimes targeted for murder because they shine a light on some of these types of activities. One such woman/blogger was murdered in the north of Mexico in the past week. Even if a policeman was not personally involved in what looks to have happened in Iguala, he/she is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't ... provide information. Many people are trapped with no way out. It's an awful situation ... for just about everyone - but the criminal/cartel affiliates.


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## GARYJ65

Longford said:


> I know and understand how easily we can be critical of law enforcement and the criminal justice/judiciary system in Mexico (who, me? ) However, I also understand that 1) in a community such as Iguala the best and brightest individuals aren't typically the ones who work in the police department, and 2) the criminal organizations/drug cartels routinely kill police and the family members of police in many communities when the police don't accept the bribes, don't do as told, etc. Also, too, I know that citizens who blog about the criminal organizations/cartels (and journalists) are oftentimes targeted for murder because they shine a light on some of these types of activities. One such woman/blogger was murdered in the north of Mexico in the past week. Even if a policeman was not personally involved in what looks to have happened in Iguala, he/she is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't ... provide information. Many people are trapped with no way out. It's an awful situation ... for just about everyone - but the criminal/cartel affiliates.


I agree on all of the above, yet, it is the very same thing that happens everywhere in the world, the amount of ingredients in the recipe varies but the dish is the same.


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## citlali

Sorry Gary but what is happening in Mexico now is a sign of major problem in the society , these hings happen in time of war or civil warss oherwise it really doesnot happen. Mass graves are not found routinely in countries at peace.


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## cscscs007

The problem that most don't understand is these groups only understand one thing. Violence. Anything less they think it is a sign of weakness.


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## GARYJ65

citlali said:


> Sorry Gary but what is happening in Mexico now is a sign of major problem in the society , these hings happen in time of war or civil warss oherwise it really doesnot happen. Mass graves are not found routinely in countries at peace.


Where is Jimmy Hoffa and hundreds of guys missing? Not only from Mr Hoffa's time
Some Countries do have witness protection programs? To protect people from....what?

I never said Mexico does not have a major problem, I stated that this happens EVERYWHERE, at any given moment of history, number of incidents vary


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## Isla Verde

GARYJ65 said:


> Where is Jimmy Hoffa and hundreds of guys missing? Not only from Mr Hoffa's time
> Some Countries do have witness protection programs? To protect people from....what?
> 
> I never said Mexico does not have a major problem, I stated that this happens EVERYWHERE, at any given moment of history, number of incidents vary


It may happen everywhere at some time or other, but not to the same degree. Certainly, things are a lot worse in Mexico right now than they are in the States. In fact, things are a lot worse in Mexico right now than they were even five years ago.


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## joaquinx

Isla Verde said:


> Certainly, things are a lot worse in Mexico right now than they are in the States. In fact, things are a lot worse in Mexico right now than they were even five years ago.


This is something I thought that I would only read on Borderlandbeat. Assessing violence by the numbers.


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## Longford

GARYJ65 said:


> Where is Jimmy Hoffa and hundreds of guys missing? Not only from Mr Hoffa's time
> Some Countries do have witness protection programs? To protect people from....what?


I don't think you're making/offering a relevant comparison. We're not talking about one individual who is missing or a nation's witness protection program for individuals. The references in the discussion have been about the magnitude of the mass executions, disappearances of thousands of people, mass graves, a domestic war and terror on a scale not seen in a very long time in our part of the world.


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## GARYJ65

Longford said:


> I don't think you're making/offering a relevant comparison. We're not talking about one individual who is missing or a nation's witness protection program for individuals. The references in the discussion have been about the magnitude of the mass executions, disappearances of thousands of people, mass graves, a domestic war and terror on a scale not seen in a very long time in our part of the world.


Ok
One other comparison, although from a long time ago, would be the "conquest" of US territory
Mass executions, disappearances of thousands of people, mass graves, domestic war and terror
My point is and keep being: it happens everywhere


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

I agree that Iguala situation -- I won't say slaughter till confirmed -- is serious, but wow, two terror attacks in Canada in two days! What is going on? But no one would say that Canada is not stable. 

Soldier, security guard shot in Parliament Hill attack | Toronto Star


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## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> I don't think you're making/offering a relevant comparison. We're not talking about one individual who is missing or a nation's witness protection program for individuals. The references in the discussion have been about the magnitude of the mass executions, disappearances of thousands of people, mass graves, a domestic war and terror on a scale not seen in a very long time in our part of the world.


"As of December 31, 2013, NCIC contained 84,136 active missing person records. Juveniles under the age of 18 account for 33,849 (40.2 %) of the records and 9,706 (11.5 %) were for juveniles between the ages of 18 and 20. *

During 2013, 627,911 missing person records were entered into NCIC, a decrease of 5.1% from the 661,593 records entered in 2012. Missing Person records cleared or canceled during the same period totaled 630,990. Reasons for these removals include: a law enforcement agency located the subject, the individual returned home, or the record had to be removed by the entering agency due to a determination that the record is invalid."


FBI — NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics for 2013


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## joaquinx

An interesting article about Ayotzinapa in the Brown Political Review
Ayotzinapa: Exposing the Fallacy of the “Mexican Moment” | Brown Political Review


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## Longford

AlanMexicali said:


> "As of December 31, 2013, NCIC contained 84,136 active missing person records. Juveniles under the age of 18 account for 33,849 (40.2 %) of the records and 9,706 (11.5 %) were for juveniles between the ages of 18 and 20. *
> 
> During 2013, 627,911 missing person records were entered into NCIC, a decrease of 5.1% from the 661,593 records entered in 2012. Missing Person records cleared or canceled during the same period totaled 630,990. Reasons for these removals include: a law enforcement agency located the subject, the individual returned home, or the record had to be removed by the entering agency due to a determination that the record is invalid."
> 
> 
> FBI â€” NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics for 2013


I sense that you don't understand the information you've provided, or the _gist _of the conversation here thus far.


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## TundraGreen

Longford said:


> I sense that you don't understand the information you've provided, or the _gist _of the conversation here thus far.


I think AlanMexicali was providing a link to some statistics about missing persons in the US. It is relevant since we have been talking about missing persons in Mexico and there has been some discussion about whether the situation in Mexico is unusual or is similar to other countries.

As the statistics unearthed by AlanMexicali indicate, Mexico is certainly not the only country where there are missing persons. However, the current situation in Mexico, where groups of 10s of people disappear and where it is relatively common to find mass graves, is unusual for a country that is not a war zone of one kind or another. Even during wars, the slaughter of civilians is prohibited by the Geneva convention, though it happens anyway.


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## TundraGreen

Isla Verde said:


> … In fact, things are a lot worse in Mexico right now than they were even five years ago.


What is the basis for the claim that things are worse now than they were 5 years ago? I don't dispute that it is possible that it is worse. But it is not obvious to me and I am curious what the basis for the claim is.


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## Isla Verde

TundraGreen said:


> What is the basis for the claim that things are worse now than they were 5 years ago? I don't dispute that it is possible that it is worse. But it is not obvious to me and I am curious what the basis for the claim is.


It's just a feeling I have. Maybe I should have said ten years ago. Sorry I don't have any links to post to prove what I feel  .


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## Longford

TundraGreen said:


> I think AlanMexicali was providing a link to some statistics about missing persons in the US. It is relevant since we have been talking about missing persons in Mexico and there has been some discussion about whether the situation in Mexico is unusual or is similar to other countries.


No, I think they're irrelevant ... because of what they present. We're not discussing "missing" or "disappeared" in Mexico in the context of mentally ill who've wandered away from home or an institution, childen who've run away from home, etc. I suppose that if we had presented (non existent) statistics from Mexico on that all encompasing category of "missing" such a comparison would be relevant. Show me statistics from the USA or Canada where approx. a couple of hundred thousand people have died in domestic warfare, where thousands of people have been "disappeared" and are assumed dead at the hands of criminals and/or terrorists, where scores or hundreds of mass graves containing hundreds or thousands of executed people have been found ... and we'll have a comparative discussion. This is the reference which I was or had meant to focus on.


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## Longford

TundraGreen said:


> What is the basis for the claim that things are worse now than they were 5 years ago? I don't dispute that it is possible that it is worse. But it is not obvious to me and I am curious what the basis for the claim is.


I suspect things were a bit worse in Mexico 5 years ago than they are now, when we speak of the war/terrorism/criminal activities. The war just S. of the US border was pretty fierce and a couple of hundred thousand people are said to have fled Juarez which was labeled the most dangerous city on the planet at the time ... and Tijuana, also, was front and center in the news due to violence.

What happened, or what most people think happened in Iguala has been happening in regions of the country for many years. When we see an incident widely reported about there's typically a month of focus and then people move on to the next event. 

The protests regarding Iguala have been relatively minor in the country. Much less interest than the kidnapping issue has from time to time garnered (when almost a million people marched in Mexico City some years ago), or even the occassional rally during a presidential election. 

Where's the anger over the scores of missing women in Ecatepec, Edo. de Mexico (some of whose bodies are now being discovered in a drained canal) or the hundreds of disappeared women (presumed dead) up near Juarez some years ago, or the 20+ tourists executed (by mistake, the cartels say) after being kidnapped in Acapulco? The Army executed a group of presumably innocent people recently and that's gotten a little press but not all that much. 

What's gotten worse in the past 5 years, IMO, is how the criminals/terrorists have 'drilled down' into Mexican society and have expanded beyond the drug trade into theft of petroleum products on a large scale, illegal logging (almost destroying much of the monarch butterfly habitat), extorsion of farmers (such as avocado producers) and street merchants, etc. Kidnapping occurs on an almost unbelievably large scale, if the published reports are accurate.


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## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> ... approx. a couple of hundred thousand people have died in domestic warfare, where thousands of people have been "disappeared" and are assumed dead at the hands of criminals and/or terrorists, where scores or hundreds of mass graves containing hundreds or thousands of executed people have been found ...


Statistics please! :juggle:


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Longford said:


> No, I think they're irrelevant ... because of what they present. We're not discussing "missing" or "disappeared" in Mexico in the context of mentally ill who've wandered away from home or an institution, childen who've run away from home, etc. I suppose that if we had presented (non existent) statistics from Mexico on that all encompasing category of "missing" such a comparison would be relevant. Show me statistics from the USA or Canada where approx. a couple of hundred thousand people have died in domestic warfare, where thousands of people have been "disappeared" and are assumed dead at the hands of criminals and/or terrorists, where scores or hundreds of mass graves containing hundreds or thousands of executed people have been found ... and we'll have a comparative discussion. This is the reference which I was or had meant to focus on.


I have no special knowledge about the missing in the U.S., but I suspect Longford is right, especially that most are runaways, more than anything else, as the statistics in that link show that overwhelming majority are under 18.

Under 18: 462,567

Over 18: 165,344

Total: 627,911

I don't think those U.S. statistics have anything to do with plight of missing in Mexico.

I think we would've been seen continual CNN "Breaking News" and screaming front page stories in just about every daily if more than 460,000 under 18 year old kids had gone missing permanently in the U.S.


----------



## Hound Dog

_


Longford said:



I suspect things were a bit worse in Mexico 5 years ago than they are now, when we speak of the war/terrorism/criminal activities. The war just S. of the US border was pretty fierce and a couple of hundred thousand people are said to have fled Juarez which was labeled the most dangerous city on the planet at the time ... and Tijuana, also, was front and center in the news due to violence.

What happened, or what most people think happened in Iguala has been happening in regions of the country for many years. When we see an incident widely reported about there's typically a month of focus and then people move on to the next event. 

The protests regarding Iguala have been relatively minor in the country. Much less interest than the kidnapping issue has from time to time garnered (when almost a million people marched in Mexico City some years ago), or even the occassional rally during a presidential election. 

Where's the anger over the scores of missing women in Ecatepec, Edo. de Mexico (some of whose bodies are now being discovered in a drained canal) or the hundreds of disappeared women (presumed dead) up near Juarez some years ago, or the 20+ tourists executed (by mistake, the cartels say) after being kidnapped in Acapulco? The Army executed a group of presumably innocent people recently and that's gotten a little press but not all that much. 

What's gotten worse in the past 5 years, IMO, is how the criminals/terrorists have 'drilled down' into Mexican society and have expanded beyond the drug trade into theft of petroleum products on a large scale, illegal logging (almost destroying much of the monarch butterfly habitat), extorsion of farmers (such as avocado producers) and street merchants, etc. Kidnapping occurs on an almost unbelievably large scale, if the published reports are accurate.

Click to expand...

_I can´t say that your observations are not flawed in some respects, Longford but everyone´s are and your observations about violence here in Mexico and the notion of what people observe and do not observe and deny observing while political entities unravel or threaten to unravel around them remind me of two places in which I used to live a long time ago and one I recently casually drove through at my leisure. Birmingham in the 1960s during the Martin Luther King (and associates) Children´s Crusade to end racial injustice that brought out Bull Connor and the pólice dogs and fire hoses and Dachau, Germany where I lived and worked for a time in the 1960s in that city´s infamous WW 11 concentration camp after that camp had been converted to a NATO base and Iguala of recent note - a city we just traversed recently on our way from Acapulco to Taxco without untoward incident of any kind, are reflections of society as a whole and not embarrassing ugly tumors reaching the surface from time-to-time to our collective annoyance. 

Birmingham, Dachau in suburban Munich and Iguala just a few kilometers out of Taxco and Cuernavaca, were and are all largely attractive cities on the surface even during tumultuous times, seemingly tranquil and civil in charácter - worthy of note as places to settle and live a peaceful and prosperous life . Then, in Birmingham, the intractable Bull Connor and his thuggish cops and the 16th Street Church bombing made the city an example of universal overt racial animosity and catalyst for social change; in suburban Dachau which, in the 1930s, happened to have an idle and unutilized surplus military base just on the edge of a charming old city just right for conversión into a concentration camp quickly with minimal capital investment and Iguala, a small industrial city in an attractive hillside setting but teeming with unseen human cockroaches scurrying about in the local sewers, to take the onus off of the rest of us, were all examples of what we collectivey love. We could blame these places for our own, long-standing civil failures and they became our examples of what we were but denied being while blaming those places for our own shortcomings.

As I interpret your observations, Longford, and if I am right as to what you are are asserting (and, if not, what I will assert), is that the carcasse is rotten as a whole from the gut and has been for a long time. Local manifestations of that rot are simply a sign of that rot´s progression throughout and cannot be excised that simply by laying the blame on specific, limited, geographic entities and blaming those entities for all of society´s illls. 

Birmingham´s problems extended easily to New York City, Dachau´s to all of Europe and beyond and Iguala´s to the Mexico City Megalópolis just up the road and all the way though the rest of North America. I must admit however, that it´s always good to have a wart upon which to blame blemishes on perfection otherwise achieved.. 

Dachau was a nice town in the 1960s, by the way as Iguala seems to be today on the surface. The average citzens of those burgs did not welcome the scourge but accepted that scourge as humans are prone to do as they go or went about their business. Such is life.


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## citlali

Is Aristegui the only one reporting that the students were burned alive and that the government knows it?


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## GARYJ65

Are we really, I mean, REALLY positive that they were the ones burned alive?
Is Carmen Aristegui really positive?


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## Isla Verde

GARYJ65 said:


> Are we really, I mean, REALLY positive that they were the ones burned alive?
> Is Carmen Aristegui really positive?


What are her sources?


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## Isla Verde

I just came from El Angel, the staging point for the megamarcha to the 
Zócalo of students protesting the Ayotzinapa massacre. Thousands and 
thousands of young people there creating lots of good angry energy!

El Universal - DF - Inicia marcha por Ayotzinapa


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## citlali

Laisla in that case an activist priest who has been saying he spoke with a witness and wante an appointment with the attorney general to present him with the map of the place where the students were buried. The priest got his appointment yesterday and he says that the government admitted they new the students were dead.
Listen to MVS there is a lot of interesting information there.

The march is San Cristobal was a student mach not a zapatista march although there were students from zapatista areas. Everyone was saying the stutends were dead and had been burned.
Many people were lighting candles in front of the portrait of the missing.
What a sad story,

There was no police around...


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## GARYJ65

Why don't they just go to the site and see if that is true?


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## citlali

A very good question Gary. It seems that it would be the logical next step unless they know the answer.


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## GARYJ65

They don't have to ask anyone's permission to go to that site
Are they scared? Are they chickens?
If one of my friends or relatives were there, I would just go


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## Longford

Mexican law enforcement and federal officials are notorious for being inept/incompetent when it comes to investigations and they're generally a corrupt group as well. My opinion is that few people in the country have confidence in their honesty or ability in matters such as these. If that Roman Catholic Priest knows where the bodies are or the federal officials do ... they would have been there and publcized their investigative skills.

As for "student" demonstrations: in some areas, such as Chilpancingo and Iguala they're attacking government offices with violence and destroying offices which help the citizenry such as the sick and disabled, record offices which the citizenry need services from for a variety of reasons, etc. And they're not all "students" who are tossing the molotov cocktails - just look at the photos. What you have is the domestic terrorists taking the lead and promoting violence ... to, IMO, radicalize the people to "rise up" and overthrow their government. That's what the school taught where the missing students came from. One of the worst teacher schools in the country (which doesn't warrant the death of the student, violence-prone or not).


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## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> Mexican law enforcement and federal officials are notorious for being inept/incompetent when it comes to investigations and they're generally a corrupt group as well. My opinion is that few people in the country have confidence in their honesty or ability in matters such as these. If that Roman Catholic Priest knows where the bodies are or the federal officials do ... they would have been there and publcized their investigative skills.
> 
> As for "student" demonstrations: in some areas, such as Chilpancingo and Iguala they're attacking government offices with violence and destroying offices which help the citizenry such as the sick and disabled, record offices which the citizenry need services from for a variety of reasons, etc. And they're not all "students" who are tossing the molotov cocktails - just look at the photos. What you have is the domestic terrorists taking the lead and promoting violence ... to, IMO, radicalize the people to "rise up" and overthrow their government. That's what the school taught where the missing students came from. One of the worst teacher schools in the country (which doesn't warrant the death of the student, violence-prone or not).


Stated like a true conspiracy theorist.


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## manuel dexterity

Longford, could you please provide a cite that supports your contention that the school encouraged violence and the overthrow of the government.


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## Longford

> Life in las Parotas, the town closest to the clandestine graves in the vicinity of Iguala. The peasant village of thirty shacks built between small fields in the foothills of the mountains where an unknown number of human remains were found. Las Parotas and its gigantic clandestine cemeteries in the middle of thick vegetation: *"Here, to tell you the truth, in all these hills we have found about 300 bodies in the last two years,"* says a commander of the Guerrero Ministerial Police, while smoking a cigarette. He guards the paths leading to the crime scene.


Source: Borderland Beat: Iguala: "We've found about 300 bodies in two years"

The linked article (above) provides some background to the clandestine graves reports we're reading about Iguala.


----------



## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> ... approx. a couple of hundred thousand people have died in domestic warfare, where thousands of people have been "disappeared" and are assumed dead at the hands of criminals and/or terrorists, where scores or hundreds of mass graves containing hundreds or thousands of executed people have been found ... and we'll have a comparative discussion. This is the reference which I was or had meant to focus on.


".... approx. a couple of hundred thousand people have died in domestic warfare, ... "

I am still waiting on a statistic for this claim, please.  .. and the others you have posted lately.


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## AlanMexicali

La marcha #UnaLuzPorAyotzinapa llega al Zócalo sin incidentes (Imágenes)

The march in the DF last night was peaceful and the photos in the link above make me thing it was attended by 10 or 11 thousand or even more. We may find it reassuring that there were no domestic terrorists in charge. LOL.


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## Longford

> Some are calling the march, “record breaking numbers”, journalist Ioan Grillo, attended the march and reports that the massive march was far greater than reported in the press. He estimates more than 100k.


Source: Borderland Beat: Normalistas: Record Breaking March in Mexico City


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## Isla Verde

manuel dexterity said:


> Longford, could you please provide a cite that supports your contention that the school encouraged violence and the overthrow of the government.


Here's an article that gives the history of the Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa (in Spanish): Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, semillero de luchadores sociales - Univision Noticias.


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## citlali

I am not surprised, we had 11 000 people marching in San Cristobal last week , it was big for this town but the avenues are huge in Mexico so it is easy to underestimate the crowd.
The march last night here was strictly students with lots od people attendin wih candes. It was very orderly and there was no police or official in sight.


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## coondawg

AlanMexicali said:


> ".... approx. a couple of hundred thousand people have died in domestic warfare, ... "
> 
> I am still waiting on a statistic for this claim, please.  .. and the others you have posted lately.


Alan, you can find much of what Longford is referencing at Borderlandbeat.com. You will need to examine their archives, but they have your stats there. I assume you can do your own research?


----------



## coondawg

As I read on another Forum, someone said that this is Mexico, and there will be lots of angry cries, a few heads will roll (but not many), tears shed, lots of promises, but mostly Mexican Smoke, and before too long, all will be back to normal for Mexico. Nothing will really change. I have to agree with that summary, sadly, but I agree.


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## coondawg

Seems to me that when some tragedy such as these students is discovered here and people start to talk about how shocking it is, there is always someone that comes along and says that the same things happen NOB, or in Europe, etc. I just can't seem to understand if those types of comments are to make one feel better, or confirm that the total world is a "hell hole", or just what? For me, we have been trying to discuss what is happening "where we live" and trying to "change the subject" or "sweep it under the rug" does not serve to add anything worthwhile to the discussion. It almost seems that some think the posters are "putting life in Mexico" under attack and just have to defend it as a wonderful, trouble free paradise to live in"to the death". Most posters are not "attacking" Mexico (our chosen homeland) but are trying to be honest and say how they feel and what they have seem and heard, and deserve respect for that. Just because a person has lived here "worry free" for a long time does not justify them making light of the problems faced daily by many Mexicans. IMHO.


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## AlanMexicali

We watched this guy on TV news last night "step down".

"CHILPANCINGO, Mexico:


The governor of the Mexican state where 43 students vanished a month ago following a confrontation with police allegedly linked to a major drug cartel has bowed to pressure to stand down.


Family and loved ones of the missing students had repeatedly called for Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre to go in the wake of the scandal that has triggered nationwide and international outrage.


“I have decided to take my leave from the state parliament,” Aguirre told a news conference on Thursday, adding he was stepping down to assist the investigation into the disappearances."

Mexico governor steps down over students’ disappearance | GulfNews.com


----------



## AlanMexicali

coondawg said:


> Alan, you can find much of what Longford is referencing at Borderlandbeat.com. You will need to examine their archives, but they have your stats there. I assume you can do your own research?


Why should I do his research? I didn´t claim a couple of hundred thousand died by domestic warfare.


----------



## Hound Dog

_


AlanMexicali said:



Why should I do his research? I didn´t claim a couple of hundred thousand died by domestic warfare.

Click to expand...

_Well, Alan; since governmental statistics are suspect just about anywhere on the planet but, perhaps, even more so in some than other places, we must draw conclusions from simple observations. Having lived in Southern Mexico for several years now and traveled about there often incuding parts of Guerrero State, I have observed that the agricultural lands thereabouts are quite fecund. The discovery of all those mass graves and promise of countless more to come helps explain this. Massive amounts of decomposing human fertilizer scattered about here and there just like the desert lands surrounding Las Vegas. Talk about organic farming.

Which reminds me of what I was told by an indigenous friend in San Cristóbal not so long ago. Amigo, he said. in Chiapas, when you buy "organic" fruits and vegetables, you are acknowledging that that farmer crapped in his/her fields and with some regularity. Boil whatever you eat for quite a while. Of course, I am translating with some latitude from a Maya language.


----------



## coondawg

AlanMexicali said:


> Why should I do his research? I didn't claim a couple of hundred thousand died by domestic warfare.


Maybe it's only about 130,000 total, recorded dead and missing with no trace or hope of finding them alive, since counting started(but, of course, the government denies this total . To me, the point I took from his post was that there are a BUNCH. Not worth "fighting to the death" over, or is it?


----------



## AlanMexicali

Many affected daily? How many? 1%, 3%, 5%, 10% 20%. 35% or more? More in a large undefined amount.



Longford said:


> Guerrero is and has for generations been a state in which disputes and grudges are settled by killing the one you have a disagreement with. Mob and vigilante and/or _auto defensa_ violence isn't rare in parts of Mexico, either. None of this is an excuse to execute "studlents" some or all of whom were acting criminally (if the published reports are accurate). It will be a mistake if someone associates what happened in Iguala with the drug war, however (there's a reference in the linked news article). The murder rate in the state of Guerrero is abnormally high but this incident does not appear to have involved any expats (students). As for expats who might live in Iguala and close-by: there are probably some naturalized USA citizens of Mexican ancestry/birth and maybe some expat spouses. I like the city but it's not a place many expats without family ties there will probably consider as a place to live. Yes, condolences and sympathies to the family and friends of those lost. Whether those truly responsible for this will be brought to appropriate justice and punishment may or may not occur.





Longford said:


> We may some day learn what really happened, the entirety of the story, in Iguala. While I don't codone star chamber proceeding and the instant sentence of 'justice," I don't have much sympathy for "students" who continually disregard the law and the rights of fellow residents/citizens. Mexicans have little or no confidence in or respect for the criminal justice/judiciary systems in Mexico and I'm hearing (in the D.F.) a surprising amount of comments about Iguala, such as "they got what they deserved." Of course, this is a city where the citizenry is continually inconvenienced by one large and worthless demonstration after another.





Longford said:


> I wouldn't place too much significance on what "students" in Chilpancingo do. It's a typically radical-left group there which frequently protests, hijacks busses, blocks federal highways, and otherwise do things for a little "fun" and extortion. Yes, burnign is an elevated event, but I believe it was primarily an opportunity to play around. In many state universities in Mexico the "students" aren't much different than life-long students in the Middle East. There are not enough jobs for people so they study, seemingly forever. An interesting twist to what happened in Iguala is that it was a leftist-PRD Mayor/administration which is alleged to have been involved in the disappearances. The PRD has long prided itself as the left lof the left, the savior of the people, the only true representative of the downtrodden, oppressed ... and students. The party leaders are tripping over one another trying to shuck and jive so as not to be tainted by what's apparently happened there.





Longford said:


> I don't know, maybe "anarchy" and "anarchists" aren't the appropriate descriptions. But there are anarchists amongst these demonstrators. What the domestic terrorists do is similar to what we'd see certain elements of hardcore demonstrators do in the USA in the 1960s: they'd provoke violence, hope to see the authorities or someone else (including themselves) cause serious property damage and harm to individuals with the hope/intention of having the "masses" rise up and overthrow the governing authority ... be the authority university administrators, local, state or federal governments. And then ... there are individuals who get satisfaction, sick as it may seem, seeing individuals killed or badly injured if that happens ... so that they can use the tragedies in some way to further their perverted ideological agenda.
> As for Oaxaca: no amount of attempted historical revisionism to fit someone's personal ideology doesn't change the facts of what happened thee in the mid 2000s. The record is very clear.
> As for Chilpancingo: IMO, the "students" aren't worthy of my respect, nor are the terrorists who burned the buildings. A large demonstration has been scheduled for this coming Friday in Acapulco, by "teachers" and "students" from throughout the state. Let's see what happens.
> And in Iguala: Reports have said policemen alleged to have been involved in the disappearance of 40+ students have been "talking." However, whatever they've said hasn't led federal authorities to the bodies. I find that strange. Also strange is the report that the leader of one of the narco terrorist groups in Iguala took his own life rather than be apprehended. And .. also in the strange category: the Mayor of Iguala and his wife continue to be "missing."
> 
> Bienvenido a Mexico!





Longford said:


> [cut]
> Respectfully ... I have to say you haven't a clue what you're talking about. Take the time to re-read the history of what happened.
> Hundreds of mass graves have been uncovered in Mexico in the past 5-10 years. And then there are the thousands of people never accounted for during this war.
> Look how easily/quickly the disappearance of hundreds of women in the North was ignored, also. The families grieve ... and they're about the only ones that do. Many people just don't pay attention to current events for varying reasons.
> When the press askes the question, as have some private bloggers ... they're executed, beheaded, hung from bridges ... with notes attached to them ... warning to leave such issues alone. Thee's a tremendous amount of self-imposed censorship taking place in Mexico right now. To report on these things can mean loss of life.
> Yes, surreal. Not only are lots of Mexicans unaware/uninterested ... most expats are probably oblivious to the extent of what's happening.
> Certainly, there are well-meaning, honest and troubled people participating in demonstratons. However, dont' think for a minute that the full-time agitators aren't in the forefront of tossing the Molotov Cocktails. As Dorothy once said (in the movie), _I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!_





Longford said:


> I know and understand how easily we can be critical of law enforcement and the criminal justice/judiciary system in Mexico (who, me? ) However, I also understand that 1) in a community such as Iguala the best and brightest individuals aren't typically the ones who work in the police department, and 2) the criminal organizations/drug cartels routinely kill police and the family members of police in many communities when the police don't accept the bribes, don't do as told, etc. Also, too, I know that citizens who blog about the criminal organizations/cartels (and journalists) are oftentimes targeted for murder because they shine a light on some of these types of activities. One such woman/blogger was murdered in the north of Mexico in the past week. Even if a policeman was not personally involved in what looks to have happened in Iguala, he/she is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't ... provide information. Many people are trapped with no way out. It's an awful situation ... for just about everyone - but the criminal/cartel affiliates.





Longford said:


> I suspect things were a bit worse in Mexico 5 years ago than they are now, when we speak of the war/terrorism/criminal activities. The war just S. of the US border was pretty fierce and a couple of hundred thousand people are said to have fled Juarez which was labeled the most dangerous city on the planet at the time ... and Tijuana, also, was front and center in the news due to violence. ...
> 
> ... Where's the anger over the scores of missing women in Ecatepec, Edo. de Mexico (some of whose bodies are now being discovered in a drained canal) or the hundreds of disappeared women (presumed dead) up near Juarez some years ago, or the 20+ tourists executed (by mistake, the cartels say) after being kidnapped in Acapulco? The Army executed a group of presumably innocent people recently and that's gotten a little press but not all that much.
> What's gotten worse in the past 5 years, IMO, is how the criminals/terrorists have 'drilled down' into Mexican society and have expanded beyond the drug trade into theft of petroleum products on a large scale, illegal logging (almost destroying much of the monarch butterfly habitat), extorsion of farmers (such as avocado producers) and street merchants, etc. Kidnapping occurs on an almost unbelievably large scale, if the published reports are accurate.





Longford said:


> Mexican law enforcement and federal officials are notorious for being inept/incompetent when it comes to investigations and they're generally a corrupt group as well. My opinion is that few people in the country have confidence in their honesty or ability in matters such as these. If that Roman Catholic Priest knows where the bodies are or the federal officials do ... they would have been there and publcized their investigative skills.
> As for "student" demonstrations: in some areas, such as Chilpancingo and Iguala they're attacking government offices with violence and destroying offices which help the citizenry such as the sick and disabled, record offices which the citizenry need services from for a variety of reasons, etc. And they're not all "students" who are tossing the molotov cocktails - just look at the photos. What you have is the domestic terrorists taking the lead and promoting violence ... to, IMO, radicalize the people to "rise up" and overthrow their government. That's what the school taught where the missing students came from. One of the worst teacher schools in the country (which doesn't warrant the death of the student, violence-prone or not).


How can all this not be considered propaganda and or scaremongering? Where are the documents to prove most of it?


----------



## Hound Dog

coondawg said:


> Maybe it's only about 130,000 total, recorded dead and missing with no trace or hope of finding them alive, since counting started(but, of course, the government denies this total . To me, the point I took from his post was that there are a BUNCH. Not worth "fighting to the death" over, or is it?


Well, cd, your use of that Word "bunch" tells me that, like Dawg, you are a brother/sister southern boy/girl. We White folks in South Alabama survived the old segregationist era of the 1950s and before with that word. It is the perfect word for explaining social discognizance.

Example conversation down at the main street whites only coffee shop on a Wednesday morning: :

"How many black men were strung up on oak trees in Alabama between their having arrived there on slave ships in the 18th Century and having subsequently moved to Detroit once there were trains to transport them?"

" A whole bunch."

How many "unruly" students are buried here and there in the woods in Guerrero as result of official and other violence? A whole bunch. We´ll never know. There aren´t that many shovels available.


----------



## AlanMexicali

coondawg said:


> Maybe it's only about 130,000 total, recorded dead and missing with no trace or hope of finding them alive, since counting started(but, of course, the government denies this total . To me, the point I took from his post was that there are a BUNCH. Not worth "fighting to the death" over, or is it?


130 thousand is what I consider close to the correct number also. Thanks.


----------



## Hound Dog

When Dawg and Dawgette drive about Southern Mexico there are many retenes we must cross and pass muster. We are obvious White (pink) folks from Alabama and France even though we are Mexican citizens and drive about with Jalisco plates and so are normally waved through checkpoints on carreteras along the way without delay and most pleasantly. Things become more complicated if we have dark-skinned indigenous friends riding along side us as we often do. Suspicion levels among the authorities rise dramatically when we car occupants appear to be multi-cultural . Anyone who thinks things have fundamentally changed since 1948 is probably still seeking out Dick Tracy comics in the Sunday paper.


----------



## Longford

coondawg said:


> Maybe it's only about 130,000 total, recorded dead and missing with no trace or hope of finding them alive, since counting started(but, of course, the government denies this total . To me, the point I took from his post was that there are a BUNCH. Not worth "fighting to the death" over, or is it?


I think you need to add the cartel/terrorist-related deaths which took place during the last 2 years of the Zedillo term of office, the 6 years of Fox and the 6 years of Calderon, then the deaths thus far during the Peña term .... the disappeared during the past 15/16 years, and the under-reported.


----------



## coondawg

Longford said:


> I think you need to add the cartel/terrorist-related deaths which took place during the last 2 years of the Zedillo term of office, the 6 years of Fox and the 6 years of Calderon, then the deaths thus far during the Peña term .... the disappeared during the past 15/16 years, and the under-reported.


I'm sure you are correct about the previous years, but I never went back from Felipe C., where many seem to think it all started in earnest and is kinda of the "official" counting point. I can see that is a strong possibility, but getting any concrete stats is just a guessing game (as a lot of the current stats are too). There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that there have been "a whole bunch", and I feel , sadly, that it will continue. There will be more Igualas.


----------



## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> I think you need to add the cartel/terrorist-related deaths which took place during the last 2 years of the Zedillo term of office, the 6 years of Fox and the 6 years of Calderon, then the deaths thus far during the Peña term .... the disappeared during the past 15/16 years, and the under-reported.





coondawg said:


> I'm sure you are correct about the previous years, but I never went back from Felipe C., where many seem to think it all started in earnest and is kinda of the "official" counting point. I can see that is a strong possibility, but getting any concrete stats is just a guessing game (as a lot of the current stats are too). There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that there have been "a whole bunch", and I feel , sadly, that it will continue. There will be more Igualas.


http://justiceinmexico.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/130206-dvm-2013-final.pdf

Add cartel/terrorist related deaths and you get an estimated number.


Writing accurately is a skill and writing sloppy stuff is suspect.


These numbers are ALL homicides, not just narco on narco, pólice/military on narco, narco on innocent victims etc.



"• While homicides were declined till the mid-2000s, they grew dramatically after 2007. Under presidents Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and Vicente Fox (2000-2006), the number of homicides declined significantly. Under Zedillo, the Mexican statistics agency INEGI documented a fairly steady decline from 15,839 homicides in 1994 to 10,737 in 2000. Under Fox, the number of homicides continued to fall to 9,329 in 2004 and then increased to 10,452 by 2006. Under President Calderón (2006-2012), the number of homicides documented by INEGI actually declined to 8,867 in 2007 before climbing to 27,213 in 2011, an average annual increase
of 24%."



Averaging at an estimate of 10,000 per year for the 2 years of Zedillo 20,000; 6 years of Fox 60,000= 80,000 + 130,000= 210,000 since 1998 or 16 years. Yes a whole bunch.


----------



## manuel dexterity

I don't understand the obsession with statistics. And particularly in this case where I think anyone with any smarts will accept the fact that there are no accurate measurements in this case. The violence is way past a level that most people are concerned with. 

My question is, when and how will it stop? IMHO drug legalization would be a giant first step. Without that, it will just be more of the same ol', same ol'.


----------



## TundraGreen

AlanMexicali said:


> http://justiceinmexico.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/130206-dvm-2013-final.pdf
> 
> Add cartel/terrorist related deaths and you get an estimated number.
> 
> 
> Writing accurately is a skill and writing sloppy stuff is suspect.
> 
> 
> These numbers are ALL homicides, not just narco on narco, pólice/military on narco, narco on innocent victims etc.
> 
> 
> 
> "• While homicides were declined till the mid-2000s, they grew dramatically after 2007. Under presidents Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and Vicente Fox (2000-2006), the number of homicides declined significantly. Under Zedillo, the Mexican statistics agency INEGI documented a fairly steady decline from 15,839 homicides in 1994 to 10,737 in 2000. Under Fox, the number of homicides continued to fall to 9,329 in 2004 and then increased to 10,452 by 2006. Under President Calderón (2006-2012), the number of homicides documented by INEGI actually declined to 8,867 in 2007 before climbing to 27,213 in 2011, an average annual increase
> of 24%."
> 
> 
> 
> Averaging at an estimate of 10,000 per year for the 2 years of Zedillo 20,000; 6 years of Fox 60,000= 80,000 + 130,000= 210,000 since 1998 or 16 years. Yes a whole bunch.


Thanks for posting that link Alan. It is interesting to see some documented facts on the subject.


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## Hound Dog

[_QUOTE=TundraGreen;5576393]Thanks for posting that link Alan. It is interesting to see some documented facts on the subject.[/QUOTE]_

Documented facts, eh? 

Some among us doubt the validity of staistical data as I am sure do you, TG, since you have been around the circuit for a while.

Reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies, 1984s French produced _Les Ripous (My New Partner)_ starring one of my favorite actors, Philippe Noirete about a seasoned and thoroughly crooked cop whose partner crooked cop retires and he gets a new young partner who is an idealist and honest to the bone. 

Shortly after the new partner comes on board, he is policing the Street when he catches a purse-snatcher in the act and apprehends the thief and brings the thief and his female victim to the pricinct station to have the thief booked.

The seasoned crooked cop, Noirete, admonishes his new partner, "Are you insane? Don´t you know that the new pricinct commissioner has declared that under his rule crime will dramatically decrease and, here you are on your first day on the job, apprehending a criminal in the act! Are you trying to make the new commissioner look the fool? "

Then Noirete addresses the victim; "Madame, I understand that you lost your purse in the street and is this your purse?" She replies in the affirmative. He responds, "Well, I am pleased to tell you that this gentleman observed you dropping your purse and has returned it to you and isn´t human nature wonderful?" She leaves the scene with her purse, pleased, the thief is let go and all is well. The new partner is properly humbled and the new commissioner´s proper statistics are not compromised.

Nothing really matters. We are all headed in the same direction. We should all just relax and soon it will be over.


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## TundraGreen

Hound Dog said:


> Documented facts, eh?
> 
> Some among us doubt the validity of staistical data as I am sure do you, TG, since you have been around the circuit for a while.
> 
> Reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies, 1984s French produced _Les Ripous (My New Partner)_ starring one of my favorite actors, Philippe Noirete about a seasoned and thoroughly crooked cop whose partner crooked cop retires and he gets a new young partner who is an idealist and honest to the bone.
> 
> Shortly after the new partner comes on board, he is policing the Street when he catches a purse-snatcher in the act and apprehends the thief and brings the thief and his female victim to the pricinct station to have the thief booked.
> 
> The seasoned crooked cop, Noirete, admonishes his new partner, "Are you insane? Don´t you know that the new pricinct commissioner has declared that under his rule crime will dramatically decrease and, here you are on your first day on the job, apprehending a criminal in the act! Are you trying to make the new commissioner look the fool? "
> 
> Then Noirete addresses the victim; "Madame, I understand that you lost your purse in the street and is this your purse?" She replies in the affirmative. He responds, "Well, I am pleased to tell you that this gentleman observed you dropping your purse and has returned it to you and isn´t human nature wonderful?" She leaves the scene with her purse, pleased, the thief is let go and all is well. The new partner is properly humbled and the new commissioner´s proper statistics are not compromised.
> 
> Nothing really matters. We are all headed in the same direction. We should all just relax and soon it will be over.


You are right Dog, statistics can be misused and accurate statistics in Mexico are hard to come by. But I still think an attempt at a balanced comparison and study of the changes with time is more useful than the idle speculation that most of us engage in most of the time.


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## Longford

I'm not seeing it mentioned elsewhere, but when I was reading various Mexican newspapers online this a.m. I came across a story claiming the Mayor of Iguala and his wife were arrested in Xalapa October 23rd and taken to Mexico City by federal agents. One might think the Attorney General of Mexico would announce the capture if it occurred, but ... stranger things have happened. Maybe it's a false sighting/report, maybe it's true. 

EJE CENTRAL ASEGURA QUE JOSÉ LUIS ABARCA FUE DETENIDO EN XALAPA | Veracruzanos.info


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## Longford

Here's a not-so-perfect English translation of the article I linked, above:

Google Translate


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## AlanMexicali

The story was in all the national newspapers and national TV news 3 or 4 days ago.


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## Longford

I read and saw the reports of the arrest warrants issued for the Mayor and his wife, but haven't seen, previous to the one I linked, articles saying they are in custody in Mexico City.


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## ojosazules11

Longford said:


> I'm not seeing it mentioned elsewhere, but when I was reading various Mexican newspapers online this a.m. I came across a story claiming the Mayor of Iguala and his wife were arrested in Xalapa October 23rd and taken to Mexico City by federal agents. One might think the Attorney General of Mexico would announce the capture if it occurred, but ... stranger things have happened. Maybe it's a false sighting/report, maybe it's true.
> 
> EJE CENTRAL ASEGURA QUE JOSÉ LUIS ABARCA FUE DETENIDO EN XALAPA | Veracruzanos.info


It was false information. They have not captured the ex-mayor of Iguala. Classic example of how once something gets onto the web, it can be propagated without verifying it adequately, as no media outlet wants to be left behind. Here are a couple of links:

Juegan con versiÃ³n en redes de que Alcalde de Iguala fue capturado en Boca del RÃ*o - Al Calor PolÃ*tico

El borrego sobre el alcalde de Iguala


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## Longford

ojosazules11 said:


> It was false information. They have not captured the ex-mayor of Iguala. Classic example of how once something gets onto the web, it can be propagated without verifying it adequately, as no media outlet wants to be left behind.


When I saw the report in an obscure Costa Chica (Guerrero) newspaper and not a mention in the mainstream Mexican or International press ... I wondered, "Why here, and not _there_." When high-profile persons are apprehended the government typically parades them before the media to show the fruits of their labor, so to speak. There's a big _splash_ in the press. And with "students" blocking highways, burning buildings and looting stores ... as if any of that is going to find the missing teacher students ... the government would want to signal to the protesters that the presumed masterminds behind the disappearances had been caught. 

Also, too, if the government has the evidence it claims it has (which I doubt), it would likely have used it to get some sort of confession out of the husband/wife as to where the bodies might be found. 

A month has gone by, someone took the students and allegedly killed them and nobody is talking? The federal government has used forensic specialists and the military to search, and nothing? (Well, yes, "something", unrelated bodies of persons who were previously executed.) A priest comes forward and says he knows, with certainty, that the students were killed and the bodies were burned - and yet he doesn't say where they are? It really is strange.


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## ojosazules11

Longford said:


> A month has gone by, someone took the students and allegedly killed them and nobody is talking? The federal government has used forensic specialists and the military to search, and nothing? (Well, yes, "something", unrelated bodies of persons who were previously executed.) A priest comes forward and says he knows, with certainty, that the students were killed and the bodies were burned - and yet he doesn't say where they are? It really is strange.


They may never be found, joining the legions of _desaparecidos_ throughout Latin America dating back more than 4 decades to Pinochet's Chile (many of those bodies were dumped in the ocean), Argentina's "Dirty War", and Guatemala's internal armed conflict - where forced disappearances by government forces during the conflict are estimated to be at least 40-50,000. Reliable estimates put the total number of disappeared and murdered in Guatemala during the conflict to be over 200,000. 

Many, if not most, of these "disappeared" were young Latin American students and workers with fervent ideals about social change, similar to the students in Iguala. I don't know if any of us can really understand the deep, lifelong pain for a mother, wife, or child (fathers and husbands, too) when they do not have those final remains to lay to rest. Adults who had a parent "disappeared" when they were young children describe how they find themselves searching crowds for a face that might be that parent, or recurrent dreams about the parent somehow, somewhere being found alive. 

I see the signs carried by the protestors, "¡Vivos los llevaron, vivos los queremos!" "Alive they took them, Alive we want them back!" For me, those words echo through the decades.... 

I doubt, Longford, that the bodies of these students will be found. For the families' sakes I hope I'm wrong. If they were burned, the remains may be scattered. I don't want to get too graphic and grisly, but there was "El Pozolero" in Tijuana who worked for the carteles dissolving corpses in caustic acid (apparently at least 300). If they do not want the bodies found, I guess the type of people capable of these horrific acts will figure out a way to make sure they are never found.

I don't write this lightly or casually. The tears are flowing as I write. In spite of being far, far too cognizant of what humans are capable of doing to each other, I've never been able to stop caring.


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## Longford

Yes, these "students" are really concerned about others who are missing, presumed dead. Believe that and I have a nice plot of land in the middle of Lake Chapala to sell you for your retirement home!












> Chilpancingo de los Bravo, Guerrero -
> 
> Radical student groups staged further violent demonstrations in this capital yesterday, and promised to continue doing so until 43 missing college students "are returned to us alive." An estimated 300 students sacked and looted retail establishments, including Wal-Mart and others. Some national chain stores have closed their doors, and are being protected by state and federal police units.


Source: MGR - the Mexico Gulf Reporter: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"*

And then there are these:










Source: Peri?dico El Faro de la Costa Chica


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## coondawg

Longford said:


> Yes, these "students" are really concerned about others who are missing, presumed dead.


I'm breaking my own rule, but I can't resist...reminds me a lot of Missouri.


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## GARYJ65

Those are not Normalistas, nor students 
Those imbeciles are nothing but thugs and should be put in a jail


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## Isla Verde

GARYJ65 said:


> Those are not Normalistas, nor students
> Those imbeciles are nothing but thugs and should be put in a jail


Agreed, Gary. Then why haven't they been arrested?


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## citlali

They maybe students or Normalistas but they should go to jail I agree with Gary. There is no excuse for stealing and looting plus considering the size of these girls they should go easy on the soft drinks... That does not change the fact that most of the students and Normalistas and many other people are vry upset about the missing students, actually I hear alot of people upset about the government in general..


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## citlali

People in charge screw up and then they have to go easy on clamping down on vandalism or whatever so they do not appear like the bad guys., it is ridiculous.


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> They maybe students or Normalistas but they should go to jail I agree with Gary. There is no excuse for stealing and looting plus considering the size of these girls they should go easy on the soft drinks... That does not change the fact that most of the students and Normalistas and many other people are vry upset about the missing students, actually I hear alot of people upset about the government in general..


If these thieves are students or normalistas, they are doing harm to their cause by this outrageous behavior.


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## ojosazules11

I agree. This has nothing to do with caring about the fate of the missing and presumed dead students. These are opportunists and hooligans who take advantage of a tragic situation. The headline on the website Longford's post links to includes the quote from Marx, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." 

I don't think either Pepsi or Coke can be considered a basic human right. 
Tequila on the other hand...


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## GARYJ65

Government do not rest them because if they do so, they could be labeled as "oppressors" and they are too much cowards, government people, to do what they should do.

It seems that we are in the kindergarten


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## citlali

I think that the government, police are crooked and the students and teachers are also doing things they should not do.
I remember asking people in Chiapas why they were on the side of the teachers, when the teachers were creating so much havoc down here and the general feeling and many people told me the government and police are crooked , so I said " well so are he teachers" and their answers were "yes but they are part of us so we have to take their side against the government".
So people would side against the police trying to enforce the law just because the police represents authority from people who are despised..
Unfortunately nobody winns in this siuation and there is no way out of the mess.


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## GARYJ65

citlali said:


> I think that the government, police are crooked and the students and teachers are also doing things they should not do. I remember asking people in Chiapas why they were on the side of the teachers, when the teachers were creating so much havoc down here and the general feeling and many people told me the government and police are crooked , so I said " well so are he teachers" and their answers were "yes but they are part of us so we have to take their side against the government". So people would side against the police trying to enforce the law just because the police represents authority from people who are despised.. Unfortunately nobody winns in this siuation and there is no way out of the mess.


There si a way, but no one wants to take it, they are way too chickens


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## citlali

yes many of the politicians are carreer politicians and do not want to lose the income , the perks or the power so the mess goes on.....
It drives me crazy that every other day roads get blockd off for a reason or another, but same deal no one wants to do anything especially if it an indigenous conflict or a conflict with them.


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## GARYJ65

"Career politicians" make me sick, they are nothing but lazy people taking advantage of the system. Not only in Mexico
Benito Juarez quote:
"Bajo el sistema federativo, los funcionarios públicos, no pueden disponer de las rentas sin responsabilidad. No pueden gobernar a impulsos de una voluntad caprichosa, sino con sujeción a las leyes. No pueden improvisar fortunas, ni entregarse al ocio y a la disipación, sino consagrarse asiduamente al trabajo, disponiéndose a vivir, en la honrada medianía que proporciona la retribución que la ley les señala".


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## Isla Verde

GARYJ65 said:


> "Career politicians" make me sick, they are nothing but lazy people taking advantage of the system. Not only in Mexico
> Benito Juarez quote:
> "Bajo el sistema federativo, los funcionarios públicos, no pueden disponer de las rentas sin responsabilidad. No pueden gobernar a impulsos de una voluntad caprichosa, sino con sujeción a las leyes. No pueden improvisar fortunas, ni entregarse al ocio y a la disipación, sino consagrarse asiduamente al trabajo, disponiéndose a vivir, en la honrada medianía que proporciona la retribución que la ley les señala".


Gary, please provide a translation of the above quote from Benito Juárez. Keep in mind that not every forum member is fluent in Spanish. Thanks.


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## citlali

yes tell me about it Gary, I am dealing with one as we speak..He is from a very old family local family, His father was a big shot in PRI, his brother PRD, his nephew Verde and he himself is PAN this way no matter what party wins they have a job. 
Right now he is parked inon of the lower secretaria(lower meaning low budget one) and I am sure he will reappear in a better spot later.
Makes lots of money , appears at a lot of functions kissing important people, is wherever there is a photo op and so on..these type of guys are parasites and there are lots of them.
They sell themselves up and good luck to the guys below them...


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## Longford

Maybe/Maybe Not:



> Mexican authorities searching for 43 missing college students have found human remains in an area of southern Guerrero state and were being tested to see whether they belong to the young men last seen in police custody a month ago, a government official has said.
> 
> Authorities made the discovery following information from four people arrested early on Monday, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The remains were found in Cocula, a town about 10 miles (16km) from where the students were last seen.


Source: Mexico: officials searching for 43 missing students find human remains


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## Longford

ojosazules11 said:


> I don't want to get too graphic and grisly, but there was "El Pozolero" in Tijuana who worked for the carteles dissolving corpses in caustic acid (apparently at least 300). If they do not want the bodies found, I guess the type of people capable of these horrific acts will figure out a way to make sure they are never found.


The mass graves, it seems to me from published reports, can be found in many parts of Mexico. Including near Lake Chapala, Jalisco - home to many Canadian and USA expats:

Read more: Mass grave by Jalisco's Lake Chapala held 74 remains


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## citlali

Actually I was walking my dogs and playing with them by the lake when all the problems were going on in Chapala and I picked up a stick to throw and I felt it was not wood..I looked at it and it was the tibia of a person who was my size.T he bone was very old and probably had been under water for a long ime as it was brown. I put it back were I picked it up and moved on..no need to find graves to find bones.


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## citlali

Longford for your info La Barca is not close to Chapala and it is not a place where expats live. I am sur ethere are some but very few. It is a world apart from Chapala but pretty close to Michoacan. However it is on Lake Chapala and so is part of Michoacan.


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## Isla Verde

citlali said:


> Longford for your info La Barca is not close to Chapala and it is not a place where expats live. I am sur ethere are some but very few. It is a world apart from Chapala but pretty close to Michoacan. However it is on Lake Chapala and so is part of Michoacan.


This quote from the MGR article that Longford provided a link to is a bit misleading:



> La Barca, Jalisco - The discovery of mass burial sites in Mexico's 83 month old drug war is not an unusual event, but the largest one which has been found in 2013 is located just to the east of Lake Chapala, long a haven for American and Canadian expatriates and retirees.


It implies that the La Barca mass grave site is proof of the dangers confronting foreigners living in the Lake Chapala expat community


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## Longford

Isla Verde said:


> This quote from the MGR article that Longford provided a link to is a bit misleading:


Misleading? I suggest those who might not understand the article consider taking a refresher course in (English) reading comprehension, and also consult a map to locate La Barca and its proximity to Lake Chapala. :confused2:


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## citlali

Longford unless you live there you cannot get it. La Barca is a different world from Chapala, I do not care what the map shows you, very few people from Chapala ever go there.
Maps do not tell you the whole story as mountains are real barriers, Ocotlan is an hour from here and it is the same think. Chapala has mountains to the north and on the east side has a road going to Mezcala after that it is a dirt road that they are paving now to San Pedro. San Pedro is almost a dead end. You need to go up the mountain and over to go to the road leading to Ocotlan and on to LaBarca. so it is a treck that people do not make as a rule.
As I said it is a different world that has nothing to do with Chapala. We have our problems and our gangs as well but La Barca has nothing to do with it.
We have our local bad guys and those of Guadalajara but La Barco is not part of the scene not yet anyways.


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## Longford

citlali said:


> Longford unless you live there you cannot get it.


Well, you're _there_ (are you?) ... and you don't _get it_ - or so it seems to me. R e a d c a r e f u l l y.


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## Isla Verde

Longford said:


> Well, you're _there_ (are you?) ... and you don't _get it_ - or so it seems to me. R e a d c a r e f u l l y.


I would take the word of someone who lives in a place over the opinions of someone who just reads about it on line.


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## TundraGreen

Longford said:


> Well, you're _there_ (are you?) ... and you don't _get it_ - or so it seems to me. R e a d c a r e f u l l y.


La Barca is just off the Carretera between Guadalajara and Mexico City. It is not really very remote. It is not too far from the east end of Lake Chapala but it is a long way by road from Ajijic where most of the foreigners live. The main connection between La Barca and Ajijic is to go all the way into Guadalajara and then nearly a quarter of the way to Mexico City. Maybe the news story just tied it to Ajijic because that is pretty much the only place they know much about in this part of Mexico. The subtitle of that news page is kind of strange. It reads "Guadalajara, Jalisco and Merida, Yucatan". What is the connection between them.


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## AlanMexicali

Yes! Someone who only looks at the way life is here from the outside will never get it. It takes feet on the ground to feel the vibes here. Someone experiencing a cyber fantasy won´t feel it.


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## coondawg

Seems like La Barca was about 45 minutes from Chapala, and not many expats go that direction any longer.


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## coondawg

coondawg said:


> Seems like La Barca was about 45 minutes from Chapala, and not many expats go that direction any longer.


Actually, more like an hour drive now, and has been a dangerous area for some time. Few expats go thru there any more. No need to go into Guadalajara, and the new road thru Mescala is also a quicker way. Bodies have been found around that area for several years, nothing new from that area for Lakeside, yet, as Citlali points out.


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## Longford

So, the director of Mexico's agency which Mexico would like to think is equivalent to the FBI held a press conference to talk about the government's plan to locate the missing 43 students. He said they've done a lot of searching on land, water, etc. 900 Marines (or other elements of the Navy) are participating. 700 Federal police are searching. 300 agents of the AIC (federal investigative service) are there with 100 search dogs. And there are 50 agents/investigators of the Federal Ministerio Publico searching. 56 persons have been arrested/detained in the investigation ... including, apparently, the entire police force of Iguala. The government has offered, collectively, about MX$65 million pesos for information. 

If I've left anything out or misread something ... you can check the source article.


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## diablita

Briefing: What's next for Mexico in case of missing students - CSMonitor.com


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## Hound Dog

coondawg said:


> Actually, more like an hour drive now, and has been a dangerous area for some time. Few expats go thru there any more. No need to go into Guadalajara, and the new road thru Mescala is also a quicker way. Bodies have been found around that area for several years, nothing new from that area for Lakeside, yet, as Citlali points out.


Not to try to contradict you coondawg as Hound Dawgs have the utmost resect for coondawgs but, and I speak as one who has lived at Lake Chapala and Chiapas for a number of years, The reason expats do not travel through La Barca any more is because, if traveling that route, they typically enter the Guadalajara- Mexico City autopisto at Ocotlán and the road on to Jamay and La Barca leads on to no place particularly interesting to foreigners in general. La Barca has certain characteristics not particularly different from Fort Depost, Alabama. When the old Federal Highway 31 from Detroit to Moblie went through there, there were shops and restaurants that flourished catering to travelers but once the interstate bypass was completed around that otherwise insignificant town, nobody ever drove through there again and the town became a nothing/nowhere place. This is what happened to La Barca once it could be bypassed on the way to Michoacan on the Autopiasta to DF.

I, in all these years living here at the lake , have never heard that a number of corpses had been located around La Barca nor have I heard it was a dangerous town. Actually, the only peope still in La Barca may just appear to be corpses as anyone with any ambition left there for other places with employment opportunities long ago and those that stayed have had no resaon to appear to be still vibrant. They just look dead.


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## Longford

There are media reports stating that the Mayor of Iguala and his wife have been arrested, taken into custody in the D.F.



> Jose Luis Abarca was detained by federal police officers in the capital, Mexico City, a police spokesman said


Sources: 

BBC News - Mexico missing case: Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca held

El Universal - Nación - Arrestan a Abarca y esposa; declaran en la SEIDO


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## Isla Verde

Longford said:


> There are media reports stating that the Mayor of Iguala and his wife have been arrested, taken into custody in the D.F.
> 
> 
> 
> Sources:
> 
> BBC News - Mexico missing case: Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca held
> 
> El Universal - Nación - Arrestan a Abarca y esposa; declaran en la SEIDO


Great news, and a good way to start the day! Maybe now we'll find out what happened to the 43 missing _normalistas_.


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## coondawg

Isla Verde said:


> Great news, and a good way to start the day! Maybe now we'll find out what happened to the 43 missing _normalistas_.


I.V., do we ever really find out the "real" truth here?


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## Isla Verde

coondawg said:


> I.V., do we ever really find out the "real" truth here?


Notice I did say "maybe" in my previous post.


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## citlali

The mayor and his wife may not know what really happened or they hay have made sure all the bodies disappeared before taking off so we may only know what the government want us to believe..


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## Hound Dog

I was just in a local "abarrotes" in Ajijic on Lake Chapala´s north shore, the home to all sorts of NOBBER expats and,as I was waiting in line, other foreigners waiting with me were conversing casually about the criminal atrocities and mass killings with clandestine graves scattered about here and there in the nearby mountainous woods holding countless unidentified victims viciously tortured and slaughtered in Guerrera State near Iguala, Guerrero just a few kilomters south of touristy Taxco, pleasant Cuernavaca and the nation´s immense capital and vast urban conurbation of Mexico City. The foreigners in line with me were remarking that, what the hell, Iguala is nowhere near lake Chapala so this criminal incident is of no concern to people living around the lake. Actually, Iguala and environs is within an easy day´s drive of Lake Chapala and I just did this draive a month or so ago. Burying one´s head in the sand does not protect one´s exposed butt.

In my drive from Acapulco through Iguala, Taxco and Toluca through Morelia to Lake Chapala, I recall no fences or other obstructions preventing these murderous slimeballs - cartels, cops, judges, municipal authorities and others from entering your fine Lake Chapala domain. In fact, they are already amongst you. Living here and denying reality is like whistling through the graveyard at midnight.


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## Longford

citlali said:


> The mayor and his wife may not know what really happened or they hay have made sure all the bodies disappeared before taking off so we may only know what the government want us to believe..


The record of Mexican law enforcement and ministerio publicos when it comes to investigating crimes and presenting them to the assumed to be corrupt judiciary in Mexico is dismal. If statistics which have been published over the course of the past couple of decades are accurate, no more than 15% of crimes are reported and about 10-20% of those reported are solved. These are a couple of reasons why the citizenry often takes the law into their own hands - even though they'd admit they sometimes make horrific mistakes. Their mistakes, as they'd see them, would be less serious than inept/corrupt law enforcement/prosecutors/judges.

Of the almost 60 people said to be in custody of authorities as a result of the investigation of the disappeared +/- 43 students, nobody is providing information sufficient to locate the student bodies. Although it's often repeated that in Mexico an accused is assumed to be guilty unless and until the individual can prove his/her innocence, there have been some changes to the legal system and I believe some states have adopted some different procedures, but I'm thinking that this case will be handled as a federal offense. It's not unusual for the authorities to accuse and convict and incarcerate persons who are innocent of the crimes for which they are charged, if many reports from Mexican and international NGOs are accurate. So, unless and until the federal government can demonstrate with little doubt that whomever is held responsible for what we assume to be the deaths of the students ... there will be little satisfaction amongst persons who continue to have an interests in the incident. 

Unless someone who has first-hand knowledge of what happened here comes forward and tells the story and leads authorities to the remains, I don't think the approx. 2,000 investigators on the scene or nearby will every find the bodies or those responsible.


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## citlali

Unfortunately you are probably right..


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## Hound Dog

> Unless someone who has first-hand knowledge of what happened here comes forward and tells the story and leads authorities to the remains, I don't think the approx. 2,000 investigators on the scene or nearby will every find the bodies or those responsible.



Anyone even contemplated that alternative willl soon join his/her btothers/sisters as worm food. And guess what, that foolish and terminal gesture will have resolved nothing.


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## diablita

El Universal - Nación - La 'pareja imperial' no conviene como enemiga

My Spanish is not perfect but i believe that the "expert" that wrote this article says that the shape of one's facial features can predict how they act. Sounds like pseudo-science to me.


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## TundraGreen

diablita said:


> El Universal - Nación - La 'pareja imperial' no conviene como enemiga
> 
> My Spanish is not perfect but i believe that the "expert" that wrote this article says that the shape of one's facial features can predict how they act. Sounds like pseudo-science to me.


The premise of that article, that facial features tell you something about a person's personality or other characteristics, is complete nonsense.


----------



## Meritorious-MasoMenos

I know that this isn't definitive, I'm sure this is in Mex nupes, but here is AP version:

MEXICO CITY 
Forty-three missing college students are believed to have been murdered and burned near a municipal garbage dump in the southern state of Guerrero and their remains thrown into a river, Mexico's chief prosecutor said Friday.

In a somber, lengthy explanation of the investigation, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam played video showing hundreds of charred fragments of bone and teeth fished from the river and its banks. He said it will be very difficult to extract DNA to confirm identities of the victims of a horrific mass murder and incineration that lasted 14 hours.

"I know the enormous pain the information we've obtained causes the family members, a pain we all share," Murillo Karam said at a news conference. "The statements and information that we have gotten unfortunately points to the murder of a large number of people in the municipality of Cocula."

Read more here: Mexico: Students killed, burned, dumped into river | The Miami Herald


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## Hound Dog

Longford said:


> The record of Mexican law enforcement and ministerio publicos when it comes to investigating crimes and presenting them to the assumed to be corrupt judiciary in Mexico is dismal. If statistics which have been published over the course of the past couple of decades are accurate, no more than 15% of crimes are reported and about 10-20% of those reported are solved. These are a couple of reasons why the citizenry often takes the law into their own hands - even though they'd admit they sometimes make horrific mistakes. Their mistakes, as they'd see them, would be less serious than inept/corrupt law enforcement/prosecutors/judges.....


We have been living on the shores of Lake Chapala for 14 years. For our first six years here we had no alarm system. Eight years ago when things got really nasty around the Chapala Municipality, we installed a sophisticated movement/human contact alarm system that not only triggers a loud and shrill alarm if compromised anywhere within the high walls on our property but is constantly monitored by the alarm company which sends personnel to our home within minutes of alarm detonation 24 hours a day every day but also requires that they call in the local Chapala pólice if anything seems amiss. We informed them that we did not want the local Chapala pólice in our home ever even for a few minutes in our absence. Draw your own conclusions.


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## Hound Dog

If you think Mexico is off-track; let me tell you I grew up in the Alabama of the civil rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s and then moved to Los Angeles and then San Francisco during the 1970s through 1990s when I moved to Lake Chapala and then Chiapas and the Zapatista rebellion and continued social instability of many years since 1994. 

One of the reasons Central America from El Salvador to Honduras is so dangerous today is because of the training punks from Central America received in the mean streets of the Los Angeles gangland cauldron. The U.S government adminstrations from Nixon through Reagan to Obama and before those clowns have been destroying Latin America for countless decades and, guess what, they do not aknowldege that fact nor give a damn one way or the other. 

If you are waitng for U.S. admission of culpability in tearing apart Mexico and Central America, don´t hold your breatth. They´re also tearing apart the U.S.


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## citlali

He also said the remains were put in 6 bags and were dumped in the river. they recouped 2 bags of remains so there will never be a total identification of the remains.

It will be interesting to see if they put as much effort to ID the 58 other people they found while searching for the students or if they do anything about the thousands missing. As long as they have impunity this kind of massacre will continue. A life is a life and they should investigate and prosecute all murders. They sure have a long way to go.


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## Longford

It's all a guessing game. The Mexican investigators are, IMO, inept. I don't know how anyone will be convicted of the assumed crimes, unless convictions are for show and not due to facts pointing to those who are guilty. I don't envision someone coming forward to say, "I did it. I shot and burned them." The teacher students should probably have been arrested, convicted and incarcerated for their crimes ... but killing them isn't something many people would advocate.


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## SirRon

this person went from selling straw hats on the street one year, then buying more than 17 homes in less than year


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## TundraGreen

SirRon said:


> this person went from selling straw hats on the street one year, then buying more than 17 homes in less than year


I must have missed something. What person?


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## Isla Verde

TundraGreen said:


> I must have missed something. What person?


I imagine that SirRon is referring to José Luis Abarca, the ex-mayor of Iguala, now under arrest for involvement in the murder of the _normalistas_.


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## citlali

Three people have confessed they did kill more than 40 people , shot them and burned them for over 12 hours , picked up the remains in plastic bags and threw them in the river. 
The police rerieved a bunch of charred remains so at least 3 people confessed to a crime.

The mayor was charged for shooting a radical and his wife was arraigned but not charged.
Anyone knows if Flores the chief of police was arrested or not?
Lots of work ahead..


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

Hound Dog said:


> If you think Mexico is off-track; let me tell you I grew up in the Alabama of the civil rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s and then moved to Los Angeles and then San Francisco during the 1970s through 1990s when I moved to Lake Chapala and then Chiapas and the Zapatista rebellion and continued social instability of many years since 1994.
> 
> One of the reasons Central America from El Salvador to Honduras is so dangerous today is because of the training punks from Central America received in the mean streets of the Los Angeles gangland cauldron. The U.S government adminstrations from Nixon through Reagan to Obama and before those clowns have been destroying Latin America for countless decades and, guess what, they do not aknowldege that fact nor give a damn one way or the other.
> 
> If you are waitng for U.S. admission of culpability in tearing apart Mexico and Central America, don´t hold your breatth. They´re also tearing apart the U.S.


Sorry, Hound, you're so far off on this. I covered the Central American wars all during the 80s, traveling with rebs in Salvador and Nica, and with govt troops on both sides. In those days, the capitals of all Centram countries were fairly safe, unless rebs were setting off bombs or conducing rare attacks, while countryside was dangerous. I went back down when wars were over, and the capitals have become super dangerous, not from returnees from LA, but from suddenly out of work soldiers and rebels, who had used guns all their lives to get what they wanted. So they became thugs.

It's happened in all major wars, if you know history. After the Hundred Years War in northern Europe, for example, all of the Italian and British mercenaries went from gainful employment to various nobles to the outlaw life that terrorized all of northern Europe.

It's not always the U.S.


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## vantexan

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Sorry, Hound, you're so far off on this. I covered the Central American wars all during the 80s, traveling with rebs in Salvador and Nica, and with govt troops on both sides. In those days, the capitals of all Centram countries were fairly safe, unless rebs were setting off bombs or conducing rare attacks, while countryside was dangerous. I went back down when wars were over, and the capitals have become super dangerous, not from returnees from LA, but from suddenly out of work soldiers and rebels, who had used guns all their lives to get what they wanted. So they became thugs.
> 
> It's happened in all major wars, if you know history. After the Hundred Years War in northern Europe, for example, all of the Italian and British mercenaries went from gainful employment to various nobles to the outlaw life that terrorized all of northern Europe.
> 
> It's not always the U.S.


The U.S. certainly isn't innocent. How many thousands of Guatemalans died because the U.S. protected the interests of United Fruit? Or backed the Panamanians to secede from Colombia to give the U.S. their desired location for the canal? Or financing and arming the Contras in Nicaragua? And on and on. The U.S. does a lot of good in the world. But behind the scenes our gov't has done plenty to harm others.


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## AlanMexicali

El Procurador relata el crimen de los estudiantes - Univision Noticias

I can´t play the videos because it is not authorized to play in Mx.. We did watch the 30 minute segment on this last night on the 1 hour evening news report on Mx. Ch. 52 and it was very exact on what the gov´t. has found out so far. 

The Procurador states it as if there is "no doubt" they where taken to that spot [video of it with evidence they where gathering including black garbage bags in the river and charred remains, teeth, burnt clothes etc.] and shot in the head and then burnt with diesel and gas for about 12 hours and dumped in that river as the 3 men confessed to [some parts showing their confessions on video] and even showed one of them at the site reenacting what he did.

Google Translation of part of the link story:

"Procurador statements showed that detailed how it was that dumped after killing students: they were calcined. A man nicknamed The Stubborn ordered after the burned and fractured bones.


"The fire which burned the remains of the normal school lasted from midnight to 14:00 the next day," according to testimony cited by the Attorney General. Murillo said the fire was stoked with tires, diesel and plastic.


Read: Step by step account of the crime of Iguala


Even testimony, admitting that participated in the killings as perpetrators, explained that some of the young people came to the dustbin of Cocula lifeless "drowned or suffocated."


Once cremated, the remains were accommodated in eight trash bags. Some were emptied on the San Juan River.


Authorities went to the scene and pointing detainees. There, they found plastic bags, bones and some teeth into the river.


Read: Timeline of the disappearance of the 43 students Ayotzinapa


"The level of degradation is very difficult DNA testing that allows identification, but we will exhaust efforts," said Karam.


Studies to determine the DNA of the remains will be at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.


Cops Iguala and Cocula have been responsible for giving students Warriors members Sidronio States for orders Casarrubias Salgado, leader of the organization. Casarrubias was told by his lieutenant, Lopez Gilbardo Astudillo, via message on the conflicts in Iguala. They are attributed to the rival group. It was then he gave the order to arrest the group of normal school."


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## citlali

They also had 3 or 4 men confessing they had kiled 17 students..confessions ae plenty in this country but since the people come out all bruised up they are not always true. However in this case it sounds like it could be true. The DNA will tell .


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## AlanMexicali

Longford said:


> It's all a guessing game. The Mexican investigators are, IMO, inept. I don't know how anyone will be convicted of the assumed crimes, unless convictions are for show and not due to facts pointing to those who are guilty. I don't envision someone coming forward to say, "I did it. I shot and burned them." The teacher students should probably have been arrested, convicted and incarcerated for their crimes ... but killing them isn't something many people would advocate.


IMO you comments are offensive to the Mexican people for someone having no ties to Mexico; an outsider!


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## buzzbar

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> the capitals have become super dangerous, not from returnees from LA, but from suddenly out of work soldiers and rebels


I don’t know what more can be said on the Iguala tragedy, but just wanted to add that I am absolutely with Hound on the broader causes of violence in Central America. Common sense would tell you that sending tens of thousands of violent gang members to El Salvador, Honduras and other countries over a short period of time would lead to a disaster. USA incubated the gangs and then unleashed them on countries like El Salvador, that was still reeling from the violent killing of tens of thousands of people at the hands of US funded and trained death squads. 

Attributing gang violence to out of work soldiers and rebels is laughable. Disastrous US immigration policies against a history of US supported violence is the cause of the growing power of gangs in Central America and the consequent flight of people. 

I gave a description of my experiences in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the early 80s in another post - enough to say that my views on the devastation that USA has caused the region are very different from your attempts to deny its culpability. 

PS, if you did accompany rebel and government patrols in El Salvador I reckon you’d be an exception, with many foreign correspondents admitting to writing their copy from a base they rarely left, the bar at El Camino Real!


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## citlali

Yes Longford comments o the students being criminals are very offensive. He does not know anything about criminal background of the students, just assume because some of them are vandals that they are all criminals. Considering what probably happened to them I would say that the criminals are the killers not the victims.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos

buzzbar said:


> I don’t know what more can be said on the Iguala tragedy, but just wanted to add that I am absolutely with Hound on the broader causes of violence in Central America. Common sense would tell you that sending tens of thousands of violent gang members to El Salvador, Honduras and other countries over a short period of time would lead to a disaster. USA incubated the gangs and then unleashed them on countries like El Salvador, that was still reeling from the violent killing of tens of thousands of people at the hands of US funded and trained death squads.
> 
> Attributing gang violence to out of work soldiers and rebels is laughable. Disastrous US immigration policies against a history of US supported violence is the cause of the growing power of gangs in Central America and the consequent flight of people.
> 
> I gave a description of my experiences in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the early 80s in another post - enough to say that my views on the devastation that USA has caused the region are very different from your attempts to deny its culpability.
> 
> PS, if you did accompany rebel and government patrols in El Salvador I reckon you’d be an exception, with many foreign correspondents admitting to writing their copy from a base they rarely left, the bar at El Camino Real!


Joan Didion wrote her El Salvador book from the pool bar of the Hotel Camino Real. No, my company in fact opened the Camino Hotel second floor to journalist offices. I was the big cheese based in Mexico City but would tour Centram as many times per year as my bosses let me go, and yes, it was like dawn patrol in WWI in San Salvador. We saddled up in the mornings, usually misty, humid, using masking tape to write on windshield and back windows "Periodista, No dispare" and with white flags flying from the windows, off we went. Good friends got killed, for sure, and I had more close shaves than I care to remember, but who cares. To imply that the US sent in "tens of thousands" of Salvadoran gang members is ludicrous. Nearly all gang members are alive and well in the US, and most inner city residents know, and if you knew anything about America, who MI13 has spread to suburbs all over America, along with spread of Central American natives.

If you knew anything about Central America, or Mexico, come to think of it, you'd know that Central Americans know that there was no wholesale return of gang members. Nearly all gang members who did get returned, a few hundred a year at most, simply go back as soon as they can, as the arrest of that guy who killed two California high way patrolmen in late October show, though he was a Mexican illegal.

I tell you, you are simply absurd to say that "tens of thousands" of gang members would remain deported. It's comical. Oh I get it, you're pulling our chain, right?

And I hate to tell you uninformed folks but the only Central Americans who think the US is the cause of their problems are left wing intellectuals. That's it. About 5 percent of the population. I lived among them, in families. Working class, intelligentisia, capitalists, and especially peasants. The US is the great friendly wealthy power to the north, just north of Mexico, which they do universally hate. I mean, some of you folks are hopeless in your ignorance, in your reflexive anti-Americanism, stuck in the 60s. The world has moved on, folks. It's not that most love Americans. They just think of it as mostly a friendly power. And folks, 90 percent also loved the US military and economic support of the 1980s. That's a funny thing for people like myself who experienced the wars. I was really burned out when I finally left, but going back, many rue the present. 

"It was so exciting back then," more than several told me. Of course, their countries were also receiving tens of millions of dollars in economic aid back during the wars. The US promptly forgot about Central America once the leftists had been defeated. 

Again, that is how great is your ignorance, raving on about evil America and how it has held Central America back. They want more America attention, more aid, more American government people, even soldiers, living among them, offering aid, advice, training. They would laugh in your face if you tapped them on the shoulder, saying you know the pain that America has inflicted an them Total ignorance. Fools That's it for me. I'm out on this subject.


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## Hound Dog

One U.S administration after another since well before Nixon has tried to subvert nascent Central American democratic proccesses in favor of dictatorial regimes favoring oligarchs and with the goal of protectiing small and despotic family clans holding most of the land and wealth in favor of a few families controlling almost everything. The Nixonian and Reaganite corrupt war machines created what we have today in Central America and Mexico and Southern California where today´s Salvadorean gangs have undermined even any semblance of civility based upon the rule of law. San Salvador could not hold a candle to East Los Angeles when it came to ganglang violence until the crimilnal punks returned there after time in the L.A. slums and still can´t. EastL.A. was a notorious training ground for the vicious torturers and killers who learned the ropes for undermining civility in all of Central and North America for personal profit. I lived for years in Greater Los Angeles and have lived in Mexico - paying attention for 14 years - and do not speak from a distant perspective. Central America is in the U.S. pocket whether it´s Reagan or Obama and the U.S. decadent administrations will crush them if they get out of line as if they were unwelome cockroaches . 

Central America is the U.S´Ukriane and Cuba.


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## buzzbar

Haha, well written as always Hound Dog, but in deference to Longford I’ll make this my last post on the broader issues that may have brought Mexico and its regional neighbours to where we are today…. 

One thing I’ve learned about Meritorious-MasoMenos – when he tries so hard to convince us of his credibility I can be sure some outrageous and fictitious stats and 'facts' are soon arriving. I’m pleased he writes that he’s out of this – I certainly don’t want to get into a debate with someone determined to ignore truths, rewrite history and whitewash USA’s role in Central America. 

And I’m pleased my guess about a connection with Camino Real was right. His post has a real flavor of the biased and partisan propaganda written in those days by reporters whose USA background gave them a blinkered approach to the causes and effects of the war. Their perceived need to fly the USA flag, and their status as US citizens, also prevented them from either being accepted by locals or truly understanding locals. I wonder if those barriers and mindset still persist with some people? 

Just one comment - in the small country of El Salvador, over 75,000 people died at the hands of US backed government forces during the civil war, giving us hundreds of thousands of people who lost family members, friends and loved ones. And Meritorious-MasoMenos tells us with a straight face that “90 percent” of the people loved the US military support of the 1980s? Yeah, right!

I’ll leave comment on the rest of his fairy tales, but would add that his specious and absolute support for USA’s disastrous foreign policy in Central America over many years is considerably weakened by labelling those who disagree with him as ‘fools’, ‘uninformed’ and ‘ignorant’.


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## vantexan

Hound Dog said:


> One U.S administration after another since well before Nixon has tried to subvert nascent Central American democratic proccesses in favor of dictatorial regimes favoring oligarchs and with the goal of protectiing small and despotic family clans holding most of the land and wealth in favor of a few families controlling almost everything. The Nixonian and Reaganite corrupt war machines created what we have today in Central America and Mexico and Southern California where today´s Salvadorean gangs have undermined even any semblance of civility based upon the rule of law. San Salvador could not hold a candle to East Los Angeles when it came to ganglang violence until the crimilnal punks returned there after time in the L.A. slums and still can´t. EastL.A. was a notorious training ground for the vicious torturers and killers who learned the ropes for undermining civility in all of Central and North America for personal profit. I lived for years in Greater Los Angeles and have lived in Mexico - paying attention for 14 years - and do not speak from a distant perspective. Central America is in the U.S. pocket whether it´s Reagan or Obama and the U.S. decadent administrations will crush them if they get out of line as if they were unwelome cockroaches .
> 
> Central America is the U.S´Ukriane and Cuba.


Don't forget when an aide told Lyndon Johnson that Somoza was a son of a b***h Johnson replied "Yeah, but he's our son of a b***h." "Influencing" behind the scenes spanned all administrations, not just the Republicans.


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## Hound Dog

_


vantexan said:



Don't forget when an aide told Lyndon Johnson that Somoza was a son of a b***h Johnson replied "Yeah, but he's our son of a b***h." "Influencing" behind the scenes spanned all administrations, not just the Republicans.

Click to expand...

_Let us not forget Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy who "rescued" Viatnam from the commiie creeps in a neo-colonial effort to play second fiddle to the French colonists who were humiliated at Dien Bien Phu and George Bush who destroyed order on Iraq because their "strongman" tried to kill his father in an aborted assassination attempt and threreby provided the mother´s milk for the ISIS creeps and Isama Bin Laden and Barrack Obama who, in typical U.S. naive fashion, is blowing innocent Syrians and Iraquis including children and infants into grotesque charred remains 

Of course, since I grew up in Alabama in the 1940s and 1950s, I still remember old folks taliking about how the Brits and the French supported the U.S.Confederacy. Of course, this was because that was the polítical entity that supplied the raw cotton for their newly created European slave factories turning out textiles that they called the industrial revolution.

Then, needless to say, these same really exemplary folks stole Texas and muh what is today the Western U.S, up to the Oregon border from the Mexicans who, in turn had stolen the territory from folks long there before them.

Oh De Doo Dah Day.

B ythe way, Vantexan, we all know you are a Republican but don´t hold it against you. You are, after all, an East Texan - may God have mercy on your soul.


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## diablita

What does this discussion about Central America have to do with what happened in Iguala?


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