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Mexico’s Missing Forty-Three: One Year, Many Lies, and a Theory
- armandososa 11y ago> Now the evidence itself suggested at least a plausible hypothesis: the attacks were triggered when a bus used to transport heroin was commandeered by the students, and that the motive—because the municipal police and others involved in the attacks didn’t know which of the commandeered buses had the drugs aboard, or perhaps had been specially outfitted to smuggle drugs without detection That's a very plausible theory. I wonder how much drugs could a bust like that carry.
- gadders 11y agoIt sounds like a movie plot, not real life.
- A010 11y agoLike ... Narcos? I don't know, isn't that based on true story?
- misiti3780 11y agoif you are referring to the netflix show - i believe it is based on Pablo Escobar
- betolink 11y agoMexico is where the new Narcos live and operate since the fall of the Colombian cartels so in a sense yes but worse.
- armandososa 11y agoYou should come to Mexico, it's like living in a (grim) movie universe.
- misiti3780 11y agobut it isnt all of mexico right? (forgive me, I have read a lot of books + articles on this but this is my impression) the violence is more concentrated in areas like Sinaloa, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo etc. I know there are multiple cartels but it is my understanding that a lot of the murders can be attributed to the war been Sinaloa and the Zetas up north ?
- j_camarena 11y agoTotally. You'll be safe in Every Mexican city unless trying to get drugs in shady places... and this is a rule to follow Everywhere in the world. As a fact, Mexico City is actually safer than Washington DC.
- dethstar 11y agoThat's bullshit (about being safe every where unless doing shady business) as an example I was almost abducted while waiting for my bus in the bus terminal. I know of people missing who's only doing was driving thru a highway to go somewhere else. This idea that only Bad People doing Bad Things™ are in risk here is dumb.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoAlso, drug buyers are customers. It would seem crazy for a dealer to endanger customers on a regular basis. So, buying drugs in a shady part of town should be (relatively) safer than most activities?
- dethstar 11y agoI don't know about being relatively safer, if you have a higher income than average you definitely can become a target because, via their other business (extortion, kidnapping and asking for rescue) they can also obtain profit, so being successful can be risky. Now, are dealers purposively endangering their clients? I don't think so, but risks do come with getting drugs (e.g the police/military comes by, a rival cartel comes by, etc). Also, most of their income comes from the drugs they sell in the states so I don't think losing customers here is such a (monetary) loss to them.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> It sounds like a movie plot, not real life. I think that's because the many powerful movie plots are drawn from the parts of real life that most people in the modern developed world are insulated from most of the time.
- joe_the_user 11y agoThe thing about the events and the theories is that the real situation is now evident and the particulars matter only in a symbolic way. Essentially, the students were murdered by the ruling narco-state fusion. The Federal authorities efforts to blame the events on a fusion of local authorities and narcos likely is perceived as an effort to cover up the general collusion between the state and the narcos on all levels. This is a world in which during the course of the investigation, 60 other mass graves, of other large groups of people murdered in area were found [1]. When industrial-scale for murder and the disposal of bodies are operating, yeah, it's hard to figure out how certain people died and where they are not. As a cause, I get the impression that finding the students' murderers now is oriented towards not finding some specific hidden villain or exact turn of events but rather on casting light on the entire narco-state complex where corruption goes up to highest level (and extends into the US). BBC: "Mexico missing students: Search uncovers 60 mass graves" The attorney general's office says the remains of 129 bodies have been recovered from the graves. None of the remains have been linked to the students who vanished in Iguala." [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33671636 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33671636
- dethstar 11y agoAbout the sixth bus, apparently the sicarios realized it wasn't who they were looking for and shouted: "we fucked up", and the leader replied: "leave no witness alive" edit: I think it's kind of sad that there's people capable of ending other people's lives just like that, with no remorse, no second thought about it. With that said, many did survive. edit 2: after re-reading the source I posted below I noticed that I had missed something, he ordered them to go away after shooting (I'm guessing to the sky?). Still, hearing someone order your death, can't imagine how scary that'd be.
- derrickdirge 11y ago>About the sixth bus, apparently the sicarios realized it wasn't who they were looking for and shouted: "we fucked up", and the leader replied: "leave no witness alive" What's the source for this?
- dethstar 11y agoI don't have a source in English, sorry http://www.milenio.com/estados/Jorge_evita_que_mataran_a_mas_avispones_0_596940675.html http://www.milenio.com/estados/Jorge_evita_que_mataran_a_mas...
- jstalin 11y agoMore victims of the war on drugs...
- billiam 11y agoThis isn't really about the war on drugs, but about the tradition in Mexico, not uniquely more than most countries, that literally every state organ is involved in criminal activity, and is in many ways indistinguishable from the crime cartels. It varies a lot across the country, but this has been true for a lot of Mexico's history. It may look crazy to us, but the political establishment has always been a part of whatever makes money in Mexico; it just happens to be drugs these days. The sad part is how cheaply the lives of these young people, including the future school teachers of this part of Mexico, were thrown away. In a podunk place like Iguala, where literally every state and local was on the payroll with the cartels, the apparent desperation at having a drug-carrying bus discovered galvanized not just the police, not just the 27th Battalion, but EVERYBODY, to slaughter anybody they could find on a bus. They appear to have been more organized about this mass murder than they were about anything else in their sorry careers "protecting" the people of Mexico. Every time I feel disgusted about the state of politics in the United States, I should remind myself of what Churchill said about our system: it's the worst, except for all the others.
- AJ007 11y agoOften a feeling that (insert first world country) is absolutely terrible is cured by a visit to any third world or developing country. What you are describing is hardly unique to Mexico.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoDon't really follow. It is like telling a friend who just got a great job that they shouldn't be happy because there are other people who won the lottery or had far greater success stories. (I did reverse it from negatives to positives.)
- 11y ago
- betolink 11y agoAs a side note, you can see how corrupt the Mexican State is when the police knew there were students in those buses but didn't care about the consequences of their actions.
- _pmf_ 11y ago> but didn't care about the consequences of their actions Corruption is not black or white. The choice for the police officers is not "take the money or leave it", but "take the money or have your wife and daughters raped and/or killed and thrown in a landfill".
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoPlata o plomo. Silver or lead. Take the bribe, becoming dirty with us and gaining benefit for aiding us, or suffer greatly.
- Aldo_MX 11y agoI'll be honest here, the 43 students is a tragedy that got, unfortunately, badly politicized and should not be taken seriously anymore. The official demand by the people behind that political movement is "we want them back alive", but since when a government has been able to bring dead people back to life? The real issue behind this tragedy is that drug dealers are infiltrated in the government and military forces, and their influence was demonstrated when they "got rid" of those 43 students when the students stole a bus with a cargo of drugs. The demand behind the movement should be to remove any criminal influence from the government and the military forces, not to bring back to life those 43 students. They're not asking for something that will benefit us as a country, they're asking for something that will never happen, even under the best possible circumstances.
- edgarvaldes 11y agoThey deny the fact that the students are actually dead.
- crpatino 11y agoProbably wishful thinking... :(
- armandososa 11y agoBut remember, they are not confirmed dead, just "missing". I think the official demand is intentionally absurd because the situation is absurd as well. Think about it: some students were "disappeared" and then the government tries to perform a Jedi mind trick on everybody? The scary part is that they (the state) are befuddled because the mind trick has always worked. The tragedy of the 43 is hardly unique on it's own. The political consequences of it is what makes it interesting, important and –as the article states– historic. IMHO: "we want them alive", is another way of saying: "we want blood for blood".
- Kiro 11y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_San_Fernando_massacre#Alleged_survivor.27s_story https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_San_Fernando_massacre#A... One of the most horrific things I've ever read.
- jjulius 11y agoMother of god...
- mtdewcmu 11y agoI'm not sure I take the word of this "alleged survivor." It sounds suspiciously made-up. Ex.: He seems to have witnessed events that happened simultaneously in different locations, while at the same time being one of the victims himself. Also, he seems to have been able to intuit various people's intentions and reactions as if he could read their minds.
- kylebrown 11y agoA point of controversy is whether or not the 43 students were incinerated. The indedentent experts (GIEI) report insist that it was impossible: > Dr. José Luis Torero, an internationally recognized fire-investigation expert, was hired by the GIEI to conduct an independent examination into the incineration scenario. Torero, a Peruvian who participated in the forensic investigations of the World Trade Center attacks, has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously a professor of fire security at the University of Edinburgh. He currently heads the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland, Australia. The incineration of forty-three bodies in an open-air terrain like that of the Cocula dump, Torero concluded, would have required some thirty-three tons of wood or fourteen tons of pneumatic tires, along with the same amount of diesel fuel; the fire would have had to burn for sixty hours, not the twelve that the P.G.R. claimed it had, based on the confessions of captured Guerreros Unidos sicarios. The smoke from such a fire would have risen nearly a thousand feet into the sky and would have been visible for miles around; no such pillar of smoke was spotted, or even captured by satellite imagery. The pro-government media is pushing back that its just one scientist's opinion, which is at odds with the opinion of scientists at UNAM (national university of mexico) who participated in the government investigation and concluded that the missing students _were_ incinerated.
- crpatino 11y agoThat sounds eerily reminiscent of the Climate Change Denialist camp: bribe some unscrupulous scientist to push whatever narrative you want people to believe, then use the media to frame the conflict as a matter of opinion. If the facts says that burning 43 bodies would require more fuel than what could be moved in secret to the place, and would leave unmistakable traces that are simply missing, that's what the facts say. Period. The UNAM scientist can claim that the Earth is flat... it is not as if their paycheck don't ultimately come from the same people that is trying very hard to cover up the whole affair.