Letter From Mexico: A Country in Mourning

Comment Now

Follow Comments

A mother of missing student Adán Abrajan de la Cruz, 23, sits in front of the 27th Infantry Battalion base in Iguala, Mexico. Relatives of 43 missing students protest over the army’s alleged responsibility for the presumed massacre. Photo: Felix Marquez/AP

POST WRITTEN BYSandra Larriva

Ms. Larriva is a freelance multimedia journalist

As the search for the 42 missing students continues, Mexico’s deep-seated history of corruption and impunity is unearthed.

This past October, while savoring a fancy quinoa salad in one of Mexico City’s trendiest neighborhoods, I heard the news that Toño, the longtime doorman of a nearby building I’d once lived in, had been fatally beaten. A rebar, shoved through his eye and skull, is what eventually caused his death.

A group of franeleros — individuals who secure street parking spaces and then demand pay for their use, often in collaboration with local police, are the presumed murderers. According to a recent news story, they ambushed Toño for not allowing them to park at the entrance of the building the doorman watched over in the Roma neighborhood, a popular nightlife destination. There, as in much of Mexico, a false sense of security reigns.

Toño’s gruesome death didn’t make world news, but just like the presumed massacre of 43 students last September, it is a symbol of a rapidly spreading cancer gradually bringing Mexico to its knees. Cases of corruption, injustice and the appalling loss of respect for human life and dignity are so pervasive that they’ve become the norm. With an impunity rate of 93 percent, Mexico isn’t likely to bring Toño’s murderers to justice.

Last February, President Enrique Peña Nieto was featured in a Time Magazine cover story titled “Saving Mexico” as his “sweeping reforms” were praised abroad and clouded flagrant human rights violations at home. Fast-forward seven months and Mexico is living one of its worst crises in recent memory.

On September 26, a violent clash between police and students in the southern city of Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, resulted in six deaths and the disappearance of 43 students. According to the government, the young men were carried away by police and subsequently turned over to a criminal gang called Guerreros Unidos. They say some were asphyxiated in the back of a truck, others executed, and all eventually burned at an isolated dump site nearby. Scores have since been arrested.

Rest of Story:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinternational/2014/12/23/letter-from-mexico-a-country-in-mourning/