Five years on, Mexican officials dig for missing students, signal site's importance
Record ID:
1433987
Five years on, Mexican officials dig for missing students, signal site's importance
- Title: Five years on, Mexican officials dig for missing students, signal site's importance
- Date: 28th September 2019
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) HILDA LEDIGENO VARGAS, MOTHER OF MISSING STUDENT JORGE ANTONIO TIZAPA, SAYING: "Let's hope we have results during the six years of Andres Manuel (Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) presidency. All parents we can't have our arms crossed to see the investigations are not being fruitful. We would have to do something. But for the time being have seen they are collaborating and we see willingness but we also expect results." PROTESTERS MARCHING (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) LAWYER FOR PARENTS OF MISSING STUDENTS, VIDULFO ROSALES, SAYING: "That is part of the new investigation the prosecutors office is carrying out, through the special unit of investigation and litigation of the Ayotzinapa case, Mr. Omar Gomez Trejo. He is doing a new investigation, also being helped by the Truth Commission. For the last three months it's been flowing and they have been working and a lot of information has been flowing. Some of this information is being processed at the rubbish dump in Tepecoacuilco."
- Embargoed: 12th October 2019 03:41
- Keywords: dump Mexico student teachers disappearance Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Alejandro Encinas Tepecoacuilco
- Location: TEPECOACUILCO / HUITZUCO / IGUALA, GUERRERO, MEXICO
- City: TEPECOACUILCO / HUITZUCO / IGUALA, GUERRERO, MEXICO
- Country: Mexico
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Crime
- Reuters ID: LVA003AYFQCEF
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Beside a one-lane highway in southwestern Mexico, surrounded by green fields and wildflowers, investigators combed a dump on Friday (September 27) for any trace of 43 student teachers whose disappearance has haunted the country for five years.
Donning gloves and surgical masks, half a dozen people stood by as an earthmover extracted heaps of dirt, with colourful pieces of trash gleaming in the sun, part of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's pledge to reveal what happened to the students.
A few dozen armed soldiers were on guard scattered around the site, which was largely overgrown with trees and shrubs. A ribbon of yellow caution tape stamped with the words "Criminal Prosecution" and a barbed wire fence prevented onlookers from drawing any closer than the entry gate.
The dump is one of the latest fronts in a search that has produced more questions than answers since the students vanished on the night of Sept. 26, 2014, sparking international outrage and doing lasting damage to the administration of Mexico's then-president, Enrique Pena Nieto.
The government has given no details so far on what has been found at the site, but after pacing muddy dirt trails wearing a surgical mask, Mexico's deputy interior minister, Alejandro Encinas, on Friday afternoon hinted that it would prove significant.
"We've now realized this is an important site, a very important site," Encinas, the official in charge of human rights, said as he got into his car, without elaborating.
The Mexican public has grown accustomed to false starts and dead ends. Indeed, authorities said last week that the investigation had been so plagued with errors that they would be virtually starting from scratch.
Located in Tepecoacuilco, a few miles from the southwestern city of Iguala where the students were abducted, the dump is one of dozens of sites within five municipalities that officials have searched in recent weeks, Encinas said on Thursday, wearing a T-shirt stamped with the number "43" in remembrance of the students.
In a grim reminder of the prevalence of unmarked graves in the violent southwestern state of Guerrero, authorities have found 184 bodies so far, Encinas said, but none belonged to the missing students.
According to the Pena Nieto administration, local drug gang Guerreros Unidos mistook the students for members of a rival outfit, killed them, incinerated their bodies in another nearby dump and tipped their remains into a river.
However, the remains of only one of the 43 were ever definitively identified. A group of independent experts later picked several holes in the official version of events presented in 2015.
In the nearby town of Huitzuco, site of another probe that Encinas said is ongoing, 30-year-old student Marco Moyo said he was heartened to see investigators taking new tacks in the search.
(Production: Carlos Carrillo, Alberto Fajardo) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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