After clashes with police last month over their hiring practises, 43 students mysteriously went missing in Mexico after last seen being bundled into police cars. Last week, six shallow graves containing 28 burned bodies were found in Iguala, and now four more graves have been uncovered, containing more burned bodies.
They have yet to be identified, and the number of bodies found in these recently discovered graves hasn’t yet been released. It has, however, been speculated that they’re the bodies of the students.
Forensic tests will take weeks to reveal who those buried in these graves actually are, but the security operation being conducted in Iguala has made 34 arrests, mostly of local police.
A formal search has also been launched for the town mayor, who went on leave with his wife shortly after the police-student clashes, and hasn’t been seen since.
There are a number of theories as to why the students, who all went to a local teacher training college, went missing and, interestingly, political activism isn’t one of them. The most likely explanation at the moment is that they refused to pay extortion money to a local drug gang called Guerreros Unidos.
Another, weirder yet still widely held belief, is that the mass disappearance is connected to a speech given by the mayor’s wife the day of the clashes. There was an event being held for local dignitaries, and some think the students were targeted because people were concerned they’d disrupt the event.
Thousands of people have held protests about the missing students across Mexico, with local vigilantes conducting house-by-house searches.
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.