This course will become read-only in the near future. Tell us at community.p2pu.org if that is a problem.

Culture and Politics: The Missing Students



Find three articles about the 43 missing students from Iguala Mexico and related protests. Read them, and leave a comment with the links at least two things you learned.

Task Discussion


  • Gabriel said:

    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/it-was-state-thousands-protest-forced-disappearance-mexican-students

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/world/americas/mexico-officially-declares-missing-students-dead.html

    http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/1/mexico-art-ayotzinapa.html

    I read these three articles, which were strikingly different from one another. I read the Times article first, which mostly just gave the official Mexican government account of what happened, and even within that account really minimized the role of mayor and of the student's politics. After reading that article, I understood that the students had been killed by a gang because some of the students were supposedly members of a rival gang, and that for unclear reasons some people thought the students might still be alive. When I read it again, I caught that the mayor had turned the students over to the gang, and that the students were in town to steal buses. After reading the other two articles, I feel pretty angry about how misleading the times article was. The other two articles clarified that even in the official version, the students were protestors, the police shot and killed six of them, and the mayor turned the students over to the gang with instructions to kill them all. They also clarified that this incident is a part of large-scale, long-term state violence, and that many people dispute the official version, and that people have been rising up and demanding change, and the federal government has berated the protestors. Some of the quotes in the alternet article made an impression on me.

    "Los llevaron vivos. Los queremos vivos." "You took them alive. We want them back alive."

    “I’m tired of my people being mistreated, of my people being kidnapped, of my people being robbed, of my people not getting the education they deserve. I’m tired of watching people be disappeared and it being treated as if it’s no big deal. I’m tired of watching those in power use that power to abuse the people they’re supposed to protect. I’m tired. We’re all tired."* (Gilberto Trujillo)

    on Feb. 25, 2015, 5:21 p.m.