Nov 5 Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico: Mayor Abarca Arrested; But Where Are the 43 Disappeared Ayotzinapa Students? La Jornada: Editorial Translated by Carolyn Smith In the early hours of yesterday morning, the Federal Police announced the capture of the former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, in an impoverished house in the neighborhood of Santa María Aztahuacán, in the [Mexico City] borough of Iztapalapa. In the afternoon, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam and the Commissioner of National Security, Monte Alejandro Rubido, announced some details of the investigation that enabled them to locate the pair and a third person, Noemí Berumen, arrested in another home and accused of hiding Abarca and his wife. The news gave rise to different positions among the political class and was received by the public with predominant skepticism, subject to a frayed uncertainty due to the lack of information on the whereabouts of the 43 normal school students captured and disappeared in Iguala on September 26 and 27 by municipal police, police who were apparently complying with orders from Abarca. It is an exasperated public opinion, also, due to the staggering federal and state omissions that made possible the aggression and murder of six persons, three of them students from the rural normal school of Ayotzinapa and another three with no relation to this group. While it is understandable and pertinent that at this point the authorities abstain from making public every detail related to this outrageous episode without verifying it thoroughly beforehand, the fact is that the arrest of the former mayor and his wife–linked with a faction of organized crime that participated in the attack of the students–will not contribute to clearing society’s anger for the aggression against the student teachers, for the slowness with which all levels of government have responded and for the inconsistency of the actions and official versions during the 37 days that have elapsed. And even though there are about 60 people arrested in relation to this crime and that, in the search for the students, there have been flamboyant deployments of public officials, politicians, and the military, with meetings [with parents] and communications and the resignation of a governor [Ángel Aguirre], the central question remains without answer: where are the disappeared? The urgency for a precise answer to this question has acquired the dimensions of an international outcry and, today, mobilizations inside and outside of México are planned to protest the barbarism perpetrated at the end of September in Iguala. but also the persistence of insecurity and unacceptable citizen vulnerability in the face of organized crime and the crimes of police and military against civilians, and for the impunity that continues to prevail in the country. In these circumstances, the capture of Abarca and Pineda Villa cannot be presented as an achievement if substantial and quick progress is not derived from it in the clarification of the destiny of the 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa, if it is not followed by a clarification of the responsibilities of other officials–by action or by omission–and if it does not proceed to a major cleansing operation in the realm of the government institutions infiltrated by criminality. Posted on Mexico Voices by Reed Brundage jornada.unam.mx/2014/11/05/index.php?section=opinion&article=002a1edi&partner=rss
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 02:50:35 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015