Turmoil in Mexico Reaches Boiling Point as Thousands Continue to Protest Students’ Disappearance

Demonstrators, indignant over the Mexican government’s role in the disappearance of 43 students, set fire to President Enrique Pena Nieto’s ceremonial palace door in Mexico City on Saturday. The act was fueled by months of anger bubbling in the Latin American country over the ignominious event which took place in September when students in Iguala, a town in the Mexican state of Guerrero, came together raise money for a demonstration in which they planned to protest budgets cuts to their teachers college. The protests culminated in a bloody confrontation with police sent by Iguala’s former mayor, José Luis Abarca, and his wife, who allegedly feared the demonstrations would interrupt an event she was hosting. During the clashes, 6 people were killed and 43 students disappeared at the hands of the police, who, according to officials, turned the students over to a local drug gang who have confessed to burning the bodies and throwing the remains in a river.

Families of the disappeared students, joined by tens of thousands of protesters all over the nation, have expressed outrage over the handling of the massacre. While officials have arrested Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, and 72 others for their involvement in the incident, the government has continually fomented mistrust among the Mexican public. Attorney general Jesus Murillo’s insensitive comment of “Ya me cansé” meaning, “Enough, I’m tired” uttered at a press conference Friday is just one example of the government’s seeming disinterest in justice. The comment inspired the hashtag #Yamecanse on social media and YouTube, with many taking to the Internet to declare their exhaustion and exasperation with the state sponsored violence and corruption that has seemingly become the norm.

The Guardian reports:

Filmmaker Natalia Beristain was among hundreds of people posting YouTube videos tagged #YaMeCanse.

“Senor Murillo Karam, I, too, am tired,” she said. “I’m tired of vanished Mexicans, of the killing of women, of the dead, of the decapitated, of the bodies hanging from bridges, of broken families, of mothers without children, of children without fathers.”

“I am tired of the political class that has kidnapped my country, and of the class that corrupts, that lies, that kills,” she added. “I, too, am tired.”

Families of the students have declared they will not rest until they are presented with conclusive proof that their children have indeed been killed. The bone fragments of the remains retrieved in Iguala, meanwhile, are being sent to Austria for more testing according to Murillo Karam.

Setting fire to the door of a palace built for Hernan Cortés, which the current president uses for official ceremonies, is an appropriate symbolic act for a wary nation abused and abandoned by corrupt officials, continually plagued with bloodshed and fear.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

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