It appears a local Mexican government is responsible for the deaths of forty-three students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teacher College of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico.

Was it bad grades? Not really.

The wife of the mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico didn’t want her conference interrupted by some noisy protesting students from an institution known for its history of aggressive protests.  So María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa complained to her husband, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, the mayor of Iguala, who decided to take care of the pesky kids. He went to Iguala’s police chief.

After shots were fired, Jose Luis Abarca Velazque, the Police Chief of Iguala, arrested the students as they traveled to the conference to protest. Instead of sending them to jail, he gave them to a neighboring city’s police department who turned the young people over to the Guerreros Unidos, a drug cartel. The syndicate killed the young protesters, believing some were members of a rival gang, The Rosas. The protesters’ bodies burned several hours in a city dump. The charred remains were dumped into several mass graves. The remaining ashes were bagged and then tossed into a river.

The convention in question was intended to serve two purposes. Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa was promoting a bill that the students of Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teacher College thought would institute discriminatory hiring practices for teachers, and lacked support for rural schools, of which they were a part. Also the symposium was to celebrate her public works and promote her election as the next mayor of Iguala.

The troubling issue, compounded by the senseless murders, was the collusion of the government with a cartel. The police chief turned to a criminal organization to solve his problem.

In this environment, where does a Mexican citizen look to for legal help, stability and protection? It seems the line between the government and the cartels is disappearing or maybe never existed in the first place. The Iguala incident makes it apparent that the government apparatus works hand in hand with crime syndicates, and God forbid any citizen should object.

This was an act of murderous arrogance, which holds human life in low regard.

My name’s  Wally Runnels and I write Border Pulp.