Tracy Wilkinson: Specter of the Disappeared Haunts Mexico's Day of the Dead Tracy Wilkinson - The Los Angeles Times
go to original November 2, 2014

Investigators in southern Mexico are checking several mass graves to see if they contain the remains of 43 missing university students. People who live near one of the sites, say criminal gangs have been dumping bodies next to their neighbourhood for years. Adam Raney reports from Iguala in southern Mexico. (Al Jazeera)

This time, there are not enough candles, not enough wreaths, altars or prayers to recognize the dead.

The dead and the likely dead are all around this small, scruffy city. Clandestine graves dot the hillsides like the wild yellow flowers that blanket endless fields. One day inspectors comb through trash in a huge garbage dump; the next day, they dredge the river.

"The hills of Iguala are a cemetery," said Lino Ponce Gonzalez, part of a community police force helping in and sometimes leading the search here in central Mexico's Guerrero state. His 25-year-old sister was kidnapped and disappeared a year and four months ago, and a brother was killed with 28 machete cuts six years ago.

"Dead or alive, I just want to find her," he said of his sister, breaking down into tears when he described a corpse in the government morgue said to have her hair, her clothes. But authorities won't give him closure, won't let him see, he said.

Sunday is the Day of the Dead, one of this country's most cherished holidays, when Mexicans remember and honor their deceased. Here in Iguala, cradle of the Mexican Revolution a century ago, the holiday this year is overshadowed by the disappearance of 43 college students, rounded up by local police on Sept. 26, allegedly on orders of the mayor, and not seen since.

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