Protesters Demand Safe Return of Missing 43 Students in Mexico

A group of teachers, classmates and relatives of the 43 students who disappeared 17 days ago seized the Government Palace and state legislature in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero on Monday to protest the slow pace of the investigation and demand the young people’s safe return.

Some 600 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, accompanied by relatives, seized the Government Palace in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, around 11:00 a.m.

The protesters put chains around the building and demanded a meeting with Gov. Angel Aguirre, who is apparently not in his office.

The demonstrators said they would not leave until their classmates were found alive.

The protesters are not letting anyone enter or leave the building and they fired rockets to make a point to the state officials inside.

About 100 teachers who belong to the CETEG union, meanwhile, occupied the state legislature and demanded to speak with lawmakers about the disappearances.

Students at teachers colleges in the western state of Michoacan took 23 private buses last Thursday and plan to travel to Guerrero to support the protests, National Transportation Association representatives told Efe.

Municipal police in Iguala fired shots at a group of students who had commandeered a bus on Sept. 26, part of a night of violence that left six people, including three students from a teacher training college in the rural town of Ayotzinapa, dead; 25 others injured; and 43 trainee teachers missing.

The missing students were last seen being forced into police vans.

The murky series of events also included an attack on a bus carrying members of a Third-Division soccer team.

The students detained by municipal police officers were later handed over to the Guerreros Unidos gang, which took them to an unknown location to kill them, investigators said.

The Ayotzinapa Normal School, whose students are known for their political activism, includes among its alumni Lucio Cabañas Barrientos and Genaro Vazquez Rojas, who led leftist guerrilla groups in the 1960s and 1970s.

Federal prosecutors are handling the investigation and the priority is to find the missing students.

Published in Latino Daily News