MCALLEN, Texas — Not long after Mexico’s Attorney General made the announcement that 43 education students that had been kidnapped by police and turned over to a drug cartel had been executed, protesters took to the streets and eventually set fire to the door of Mexico’s National Palace.
The National Palace is the building historically used by the Mexican president and his staff in Mexico City and on Saturday night, thousands of protesters met at the plaza square to protest the worsening security situation in that country. Unlike in the U.S., where the president lives and works at the White House, in Mexico the president lives at the presidential residence of Los Pinos, or The Pines, and works out of the National Palace.
In late September, 43 students from the rural community of Ayotzinapa Guerrero were kidnapped by the police from Iguala under orders of their Mayor Jose Luis Abarca to keep the students from ruining a public event hosted by his wife, information released by Mexico’s Attorney General to Breitbart Texas shows. Iguala is just north of the popular resort town of Acapulco Guerrero which is one of Mexico’s most important shipping ports and widely used by organized crime for drug smuggling.
The police officers then turned the students over to members of the Guerrero’s Unidos drug cartel who tortured the students and then executed them while trying to find out if they were rival cartel members. The bodies were then torched in the landfill of the neighboring town of Cocula and the remains dumped in a river.
Since the students had gone missing, protesters and public opinion castigated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto for his failure to improve the security situation in his country. Since news of the student’s demise broke, the protesting has only increased.
Follow Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter @ildefonsoortiz
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