Tired Of This Already

---

In a world distracted by beheadings and Ebola, a surfeit of horrors, who can concern themselves with the disappearance of forty-three young men from a rural teachers’ college in Ayotizinapa, a small town in Mexico’s Guerrero province?

Forty-three Mexican mothers, for starters.

Fast-forwarding to the alleged conclusion, the nation’s Attorney General claims that the students were abducted by police by order of the local mayor, then turned over to a gang that killed them and burned their bodies before throwing their remains into a river.

Some say that the government is getting ahead of itself in order to end the protests and get the public to stop demanding answers. The Arab Spring, after all, was born by one man’s brave protest and self-immolation in Tunisia. His youthful refusal to accept the status quo sparked a revolution that mobilized an entire country and toppled a dictatorship. Political corruption, rife within the Arab world, just didn’t sit right with a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth.

Similarly in Mexico, the students’ kidnapping struck a nerve and became a national story. For over a month, the case sparked protests in every part of the country as circumstances laid bare the audacious, symbiotic relationship between corrupt elected officials and narco criminals. It encapsulated many Mexicans’ worst fears: If something like this can happen, is any place safe for our children? If something like this can happen, where is our country headed?

These protests gave rise to a movement demanding justice and answers to the abduction and probable murder of forty-three innocent young men, whose biggest crime was travelling on buses and vans to nearby Iguala to protest a lack of funding for their school. They had no ties to the drug trade or politics; they were just ordinary kids, emboldened by necessity, coming from poor families and studying to be teachers.

Reading like a souped-up scene from Macbeth, enter the mayor of Iguala who, fearing that the students would disrupt an outdoor speech by his wife, ordered his chief of police to stop the demonstration. In an act of political corruption spun out of control, the husband-wife team called on their close ties with Guerros Unidos, a local drug cartel, and enlisted the local police to hand over the students to the gang, who are believed to have murdered them. Shortly after their disappearance, the body of one of the students was found with his eyes gouged out and the skin from his face removed. The others are still missing.

In response to these unconscionable acts, Mexico has erupted in near-constant protests. Amidst cries borrowed from a dismissive official’s inadvertent comment, “Ya Me Cansé” (a phrase that basically translates as “I’m tired of this already”), a demonstration in Mexico City turned violent with protestors attempting to burn down the presidential palace. “La Lucha Sigue” (“The Fight Goes On”) predicated the closing of the Acapulco airport and became the battle cry of students all over the country. Social activists are calling for a general strike today, marking the 104^th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Although plans are vague, Mexicans are being asked not to go to work or school, not to shop and not to watch television for one day. Mass demonstrations have already disrupted transportation throughout the capital city, and a march to the Zocalo, Mexico City's central square, is planned for later this afternoon. There are also rumours that, before the New Year, President Enrique Peña Nieto will be asked to resign.

At this point, there is nothing at all clear about the overall situation. Scapegoating it, however, avoids appropriate measures being taken and diverts attention away from the larger problem of drug-related violence and governmental corruption, of which the disappearance of the forty-three is a particularly stark symptom.

Meanwhile, the search for the missing students goes on. Inconsolable relatives insist “You took them alive; we want them alive.” In response, expert searchers and DNA investigators from other countries have been called in. For there are mass graves, filled with charred, dismembered corpses, to exhume.

And, as everyone knows, where there are mass graves, mass injustices have been perpetrated.

---

Comments

[Adrienne]

Thank you
Thank you for writing on this.

[cabochick]

Viva Mexico
I always worry about blogging anything political about my beloved Mexico. Thank you for being so eloquant in your execution.

[Miri Garaway]

We live in a frightening world
What a horrible, senseless atrocity, brought to light with your powerful, eloquent words. Certainly better than any newspaper could report. (and there was an article about it in today's Vancouver Sun)

[marsha ablowitz]

thanks Liz
Hope the protesters get some positive results. Thanks for your piece.

[sharon Minkoff]

Shocking
Thank you for sharing this. The situation with drug wars is horrific enough but to think that the corruption has reached such a point that these innocent young men have lost their lives in this way is just unimaginable. I'm glad to hear that people are fighting back. I hope it can turn things around. Your writing Liz, as always, is excellent - moving and intelligent.

[Liz McGeough]

TIRED OF THIS ALREADY
Government officials and drug cartels run rampant in Mexico (also other countries) and the value of the life of a human being is unimportant! What horrendous, brutal and evil these people are who mutilated these young men. If 43 of their children (including relatives, etc.) had their eyes gouged out and face skin ripped, they would be a dealy war in Mexico. They should walk in the shoes of the families who are suffering so and feel what it is like, day after day, praying and hoping for their return. Enough death and killings are around the world now and what excuse does the Mexican Government have for this massacre. The government is corrupt and I pray the Mexican people can retaliate and find some solution and peace in their country. First, get rid of the corrupt government! Then the police! The mayor! Start anew! Bless all the poor souls and families who are suffering from this atrocitiy. Liz McGeough

[Zena]

Great article. You should submit it to a newspaper!

[Carolyn Birchall]

A very moving piece, Liz. It must have taken a certain amount of courage to write it.

[taracloud]

Excellent account!
So many Mexicans feel like the student in this photo--so many years of protests and so little has changed. Your writing is moving and well presented. The US certainly has some responsibility in the hapless War on Drugs that takes so many lives on both sides of the border. How wonderful if this latest massacre of the innocents could lead to real change.

[Judy Fern]

Whew!
I don't know the timing since we met, but this seems to be the first batch I've been able to open. I started with you as a pot -- very clever -- and went backward to the missing muchachos. I have to stop here because the visual of you as a pot contrasted severely with this one. But congratulations on your new casa and I shall save this whole thing and keep progressing -- backward. Maybe then we can catch up (down?)