Authorities Implicated in Mexico Violence, But US Security Aid Still Flows Cora Currier and Jesse Franzblau - First Look
go to original May 9, 2015

An explosive new investigation published by The Intercept reveals the untold story of how 43 students disappeared in Mexico on the night of September 26, 2014. (Democracy Now!)

The case of 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa teachers college, who were kidnapped last September from the Mexican city of Iguala and have not been seen since, has caused an international outcry and rocked the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto. The Mexican government has sought to portray the Iguala case as the work of local government officials and their gangster accomplices, but as The Intercept reported this week, evidence implicating authorities in the disappearances has led to a concentration of popular anger in a single phrase: fue el estado. “It was the state.”

Iguala, however, was just one among many recent atrocities in Mexico. The previous June, Mexican soldiers killed 22 people in Tlatlaya, in the state of Mexico. Then last month, Mexican journalists reported that federal police had massacred 16 people in January in Apatzingán, in the western state of Michoacán. In each case, authorities allegedly tried to cover up the killings.

In the span of less than a year, these three incidents have implicated local, federal, and military authorities, providing graphic examples of the state-sponsored violence that has become so prevalent in Mexico.

In this context, U.S. cooperation with the Mexican government — which entails billions in American financial backing for its war on drugs — is receiving renewed scrutiny.

Read the rest at First Look

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