As you might recall, last fall 43 student activists from a teachers' college were on their way to a demonstration when they were ambushed by police who apparently turned them over to narcos to be disappeared.
It was a terrifying confirmation of what journalists, analysts, and Mexican citizens have been saying about the relationship between the government and the "cartels" for yearsâthat they're deeply integrated and perhaps just different wings of a single organization.
The federal government claimed to know nothing about what happened, but this morning Amy Goodman interviewed two journalists about their article in the periodical Proceso that ties the feds to the scene of the crime, later torturing witnesses, and trying to obfuscate who was involved.
It's bracing stuff (and, as they say, a rush transcript):
ANABEL HERNĂNDEZ: Well, as you know, the official story is that the attack against the students and the disappearance of the 43 students just were involved the local governmentâthe mayor, Abarca, and his local police. But what we found, in documents, testimonies and also in a video, is that the federal police and the federal government was also involved, not just in the attack, but also the federal government was monitoring the students since the left to Ayotzinapa. That shows that the attack was planned, wasnât an accident, wasnât something casual, was very, very planned.
In one cell phone video the journalists got ahold of, you can hear students saying to the police: just after the initial attack "Why are you picking up the gun shells? You know what youâve done. You know that youâre guilty. Why are you picking up these gun shells?"
Apparently, the police didn't just pre-plan their attack on the student activistsâthey planned to start covering it up immediately.
