US Protesters Against Police Brutality Embrace Families of Mexico's Missing Students Cleuci de Oliveira - Latin America News Dispatch
go to original April 28, 2015

Seven months to the day after watching two of his classmates get shot in the head and many more get taken away by police — never to be heard from again — Ángel Neri de la Cruz marched in New York to demand answers about the fate of his fellow students.

He joined the grief-stricken relatives of his missing classmates at the head of a protest on Sunday that began in Washington Square Park and culminated with a rally in front of the United Nations headquarters in midtown Manhattan.

“I’m here to talk to people about the truth and reality of what is happening in Mexico,” Neri told LAND, referring to the widespread corruption among Mexico’s governing classes and to a culture of impunity that allows policemen to injure or kill civilians with little oversight or accountability.

Neri, 19, is one of the few survivors of a deadly attack by municipal police on teacher-trainee students in Iguala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, on Sept. 26, which left six dead, 26 injured and 43 missing. He traveled to the United States with family members of the missing in an effort to re-ignite the search for the students.

Sunday’s rally in New York coincided with demonstrations in Baltimore over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died on April 19 in police custody after a spinal cord injury he incurred during or prior to his arrest did not receive immediate medical attention.

Americans and Mexicans have reacted with shock and horror to incidents over the last year that, in each country, have come to symbolize a deadly chasm between the rule of law and the citizens it is meant to protect. On Sunday, Mexican and American representatives of the individual struggles north and south of the border marched side-by-side to demand an end to police brutality.

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Photo: Cleuci de Oliveira/Latin America News Dispatch

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