To make the outcry and disdain heard throughout the country, thousands of protesters gathered in southern Mexico October 22nd. The event was to show their indignation towards the disappearance of 43 students that occurred one month prior.
Suspected members of a criminal gang have confessed to killing more than 40 missing at the end of September. These students have been missing for more than six weeks and had already been believed dead. Mexico’s attorney general stated the confirmation after charred human remains were fished from a river and its banks, and on November 7th, Mexican Minister of Justice, Jesus Murillo Karam made the announcement.
“I know the enormous pain the information we’ve obtained causes the family members, a pain we all share,” Murillo Karam said. “The statements and information that we have gotten unfortunately point to the murder of a large number of people.”
Three suspects have detailed that the students were killed after having been delivered by police with criminal group Guerreros Unidos, between the towns of Iguala and Cocula in the state of Guerrero. Karam believes that the charred corpses were deposited in plastic bags and thrown into a nearby river. According to their confessions, the bodies were burned with gasoline, on pyres of wood and plastic, in an horrifying operation that lasted 14 hours.
Karam noted that it is difficult to identify the charred remains and that the authorities will continue to see that students are missing until the results of DNA tests. Without DNA confirmation, there is no documentation with the bodies or that has been brought forward as of having belonged to the students before this massacre. Before his press conference, the minister had given this information to the families, but they had already stated that they didn’t believe that young people were killed before the results of independent experts from Argentina had even been submitted.
The 43 young people between 17 and 21 years have disappeared Sept. 26th after a shootout caused by police and armed men, alleged drug traffickers, who had left six dead and 25 wounded. This is the first time that the Mexican judicial authorities have told this matter in a way that leads to the conclusion that, most likely, all the missing were killed.
The alleged instigators of this attack, the former mayor of Iguala and his wife were arrested Tuesday. In total 74 people – police officers, suspected criminals – were arrested from the facts.
Authorities have arrested 74 suspects, including former Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda. The two are accused of ordering the assault on the students, and are the alleged instigators of the attack, claiming that they had the intent to disturb a public party thrown by Pineda. The suspects included police officers and suspected criminals.
After the press conference of the Ministry of Justice, the President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto promised parents that justice would be done in saying that the capture of the initiators is not sufficient and that they will stop all those involved.
Though despite what seems to be overwhelming evidence, some parents hold strong that the charred remains aren’t the students and perhaps a group from another conglomeration of people. There are those who remain very hopeful, “We believe that they’re alive, and we want them brought back alive,” said Felipe de la Cruz, one of the parents of the missing students. “We believe in God that they’re alive.”