To the Teacher:
In the past several months, massive student-led protests have erupted in Mexico against government corruption and the state’s failure to protect its citizens from widespread gang violence. Although many people in the United States have heard little about the movement pushing for dramatic changes in Mexican society, the protests have dominated headlines in that country and have drawn increasing international attention.
The protests were sparked by the disappearance of 43 university students on September 26, 2014. The students were part of a larger group who had traveled to attend a protest against government corruption. On that day, police stopped the bus caravan carrying the students and opened fire, killing three activists and several bystanders. Authorities detained 43 other students, who went missing. It is suspected that they were handed over to a local gang to be killed.
The event has produced nationwide outrage and large protests, particularly in Mexico City. Demonstrators charge the government with having a hand in students’ disappearance, and some are calling for the resignation of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
This lesson consists of two student readings. The first reading explains why large numbers of citizens are protesting in Mexico, describing the disappearance of the Mexican students and subsequent developments. The second reading looks in more detail at the demands of the protests and the issues that concerned citizens have raised. Questions for discussion follow each reading.
Reading 1:
The Disappearance of 43 Students Ignites a Country
In the past several months, massive, student-led protests have erupted in Mexico against government corruption and the government’s failure to protect its citizens from widespread gang violence. Although many people in the United States have heard little about this giant movement, the protests have dominated headlines in that country and have drawn increasing international attention.
The protests were sparked by the disappearance of 43 university students on September 26, 2014 in Iguala, Mexico. The students, who were enrolled at a rural teachers college in Guerrero, were part of a larger group who had traveled to attend a protest against government corruption. On that day, police stopped the bus caravan carrying the students and opened fire, killing three activists and several bystanders. Forty-three of the students were taken away by police.
Federal authorities say they heard confessions from drug traffickers that the students were rounded up on the orders of the Iguala Mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, and then delivered to a drug gang to be murdered. Authorities believe the students' remains were burned at a landfill, then placed inside plastic bags and thrown into a river.
On December 7, Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam announced that the remains of one of the students, 19-year-old Alexander Mora, had been found in a plastic bag. So far, Mora's remains are the only ones that have been identified.
Authorities have accused Iguala Mayor Abarca of being the "probable mastermind" in the students' disappearance. He's been charged with six counts of aggravated homicide and one count of attempted homicide and is now being held in a federal prison, authorities said.
The mayor and his wife, his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, are suspected to be collaborating with Mexican drug gang Guerreros Unidos. According to the New York Times:
Federal officials said Guerreros Unidos regularly paid off the mayor for his cooperation and that of the police force, which acted as muscle for the gang. The mayor received up to $220,000 every few weeks, the officials have said, while his wife was described as a top operative of the gang. It is an offshoot of the larger, better-known Beltrán Leyva crime group in which Ms. Pineda Villa’s brothers — two of whom were killed in 2009 — have acted as leaders. The mayor is also a suspect in the killing of a political activist last year, the authorities said.
Guerreros Unidos specializes in kidnapping, extortion and growing and preparing opium poppies to be refined into heroin for the American drug market.
According to the BBC, "In the weeks since the students disappeared, at least 300 families have come forward claiming they too have relatives missing in the area."
The disappearance of the students has produced nationwide outrage and generated large protests. In a November 11, 2014 article, CNN reporter Catherine E. Shoichet described the escalating frustration in the country:
Mounting fury over government officials' response to -- and possible role in -- the students' disappearance has convulsed the country for weeks, posing a mounting challenge to Mexico's President amid demonstrations where at times violence has flared.
It's one of the most serious cases in the contemporary history of Mexico and Latin America, Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco told Mexico's El Economista newspaper. He compared it to a massacre of students during a Mexico City demonstration in 1968.
"At that time, these kinds of things happened: mass disappearances of people, where no one was held accountable," he told the newspaper.
Yet in the 21st century, he said, Latin America "has overcome these kinds of practices." It's no wonder, he said, that "an act of this magnitude" unfolding "in view of all Mexicans, the international community and the media" has caught so much attention....
"People in Mexico are taking to the streets yesterday, today and just about every day for the last month, demanding not only clearing up this particular crime, which is very particularly egregious and important, but really a change to the system," [National Autonomous University of Mexico professor John] Ackerman said. "Mexico's transition to democracy has not been very democratic. People are looking for a new system and a new way of thinking about government and the relationship between state and society."
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- According to the readings, why were the missing students targeted for repression?
- How have government officials been implicated in the disappearances?
- Professor John Ackerman argues that the Mexican people "are looking for a new system and a new way of thinking about... the relationship between state and society." What do you think he means by this? What changes might be included in creating a different relationship between citizens the government?
Student Reading 2:
Widening Protests in Mexico
Since the September 26 disappearance of the 43 student activists in Iguala, mass protests have erupted in Mexico criticizing the government’s handling of the case. These protests have expanded to highlight other injustices. Demonstrators have drawn connections between issues of governmental corruption, gang violence, and the suppression of dissent in the country, and they are calling for system-wide reforms to address these challenges.
Demonstrators charge that the federal government, and President Peña Nieto’s administration, is infected with corruption. Peña Nieto’s initial lack of response to the students’ disappearance, coupled with his government's larger ineptitude in addressing gang violence, have coalesced into the biggest threat to his administration since he took office in 2012.
Some critics believe that U.S. policies are not helping the situation in Mexico. The U.S. government is sending significant amounts of money to Mexico as part of its "war on drugs." Critics contend that this funding has only propped up corrupt officials and has had a counterproductive effect.
The U.S. has a security cooperation agreement with Mexico and Central American countries called the Merida Initiative, whose stated aim is to combat drug trafficking, organized crime and money laundering. According to Foreign Policy contributor Laura Carlsen, the U.S. has channeled nearly $3 billion to the Mexican government through the Merida Initiative. In addition, "the U.S. Department of Defense money is training police forces and armed forces that now we find are directly involved in attacks on the people, and particularly attacks on youth."
(For more information on U.S.-Mexico drug control policies, see this description from the White House, and this critique of current policy.)
The protests now underway aims to change things in Mexico. New Yorker magazine essayist Francisco Goldman wrote that we might be witnessing the beginning of a second Mexican Revolution. Laura Carlsen notes that the "historic struggle between Mexico’s student left and the federal government... has been brewing for years if not decades." The disappearances, she says, might generalize this struggle and bring it "into the rest of the country." Protests and civil disobedience have spread throughout Mexico.
Comparing the recent unrest in Mexico with the wave of democratic revolutions that swept through the Middle East in the 2011 "Arab Spring," writer Ioan Grillo asks in a November article for NBC News, "Are The Missing Students Protests Turning Into A Mexican Spring?" Grillo writes:
[A]lmost every day, citizens take to the streets somewhere in Mexico, from gatherings with a few hundred to mass marches with more than a hundred thousand....
Political analysts are trying to figure out what the movement represents and where it could lead.
Some are comparing it with "Occupy" in the United States and the "Indignados" (the outraged) in Spain: Fed-up Mexicans are spreading their messages using social media and have few visible leaders. ...
"Today's protests are the most important since 1968 and they might become bigger still," says politics professor Maria Eugenia Valdez, who participated in the '60s protests as a student. "The temperature is very high in Mexico right now."
Grillo further notes that protesters have used several different hashtags in publicizing their actions on social media. These include:
#TodosSomosAyotzinapa — WeAreAllAyotzinapa, referring to the teacher training college where the Iguala kidnap victims studied. (Also used: #Ayotzinapa.)
#YaMeCanse — The phrase can mean "I'm tired" or "I've had enough." It refers to comments by Mexico's attorney general to reporters about the case of the missing students. Protesters have appropriated the phrase to say they're the ones who've had enough of corruption and lack of justice.
#FueraPeña — Calling for President Enrique Peña Nieto to leave office (literally "Peña out.")
#Revolucion — Needs no explanation.
If the government fails to address citizen grievances, it's likely that the unrest will continue.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- As protests have grown, what types of issues have activists incorporated into their demands?
- According to the reading, some critics contend that U.S. policy has only made the problem of corruption and gang violence in Mexico worse. What is their argument? What do you think of this position?
- The reading makes a comparison between the Mexican protests, the Arab Spring, and Occupy. Based on your knowledge on these protests, what might be some similarities and what are some differences? Can you think of other waves of protest that might have similarities with the current demonstrations in Mexico?
- Research assistance provided by Yessenia Gutierrez.