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Within twenty-four hours of protestors setting fire
to the National Palace door in Mexico City, Mexico, I phoned a close
friend. I cannot say much about him; however, I can say that he is from
Mexico City, lives there, and that he works with elected officials who
respond directly to the head of state. I asked him what the back-story
was regarding recent polemics surrounding the protests and
missing/murdered 43 students. He told me that nobody knows the official
story, but that the popular perception of the tragedy undergirds the
current commotion.

Everything allegedly started in Iguala, a town in the State of
Guerrero. The mayor’s wife is fairly outspoken politically, and she
planned to give a speech. In the past, however, she had trouble with
confrontations and protestors—especially students of “normal” schools.
Normal schools are for students who want to become, or are studying to
become, teachers. My friend said:

There are all these things going on in terms of
education. They are cutting the budgets of different schools; they are
diminishing the amounts of credits or courses that students have to
take. For example, you can graduate, but you will no longer be an
engineer, you would be a ‘technical engineer’ because of how the
curriculum works out now. However, in Mexico, people are very big into
their titles. Everywhere you go, people call you licenciado, or maestro,
or doctor. They are really into their titles.

The roots of the current unrest go deeper than titles; not only does a
change in professional title demote students’ and teachers’ socially,
but it also places them at a lower market value for the workforce. This
“changes a lot in terms of salary,” my friend said, “which, in Mexico,
is nothing. So, you go from nothing, to even more nothing. So, students
and teacher are fed-up, and protesting.”

My friend could not stress enough that the now missing/murdered “[43
students] wouldn’t have done anything. They wouldn’t engage in any
violence; they would just be there making noise. But [the mayor’s wife]
told the police—which she controls—to ‘take care of them.’” For that
matter, student protests take aim at issues of education in the hopes of
it shaping their future work, not to diminish the state. In Mexico,
however, my friend explained that to “take care of someone” does not
mean to put up roadblocks, or to arrest people unduly. He said, “What it
means is, kidnap them, dismember them, and burn them alive. So, that’s
essentially what happened. She told the police, ‘Hey, don’t let them
come near me.’ So what they took that as, was, ‘let’s kill them
off.’” The Mayor of Iguala’s wife apparently did not
want any rabble-rousing during her speech.

A question remained regarding popular opinion, though. Did denizens
of the Distrito Federal (D.F., or Mexico City) believe the 43 missing
students to have been killed this way? Was public perception clear about
dismemberment and burning? After all, it is largely atrocious and
unthinkable. “Yup,” my friend said, and he explained why:

There are a few theories, but this one is in line with
what ‘they’ usually do. They take you out to a forest, or a mountain,
and then they tell you to start digging ditches. So you dig. Then they
kill you, chop you, and they light you on fire. Now there are all these
mass graves. Victims dig their own graves and are killed.