In the hills surrounding the city where 43 Mexican students were kidnapped and likely killed last year, the search for the missing continues.
Ten months since their disappearance, none of the students’ remains have been found in the 60 clandestine graves that have so far been uncovered around the city of Iguala, Guerrero. And authorities do not believe any will be.
The young men’s suspected assassins told interrogators they carried the students andincinerated them in a trash dump in a neighboring town the same night they were kidnapped. The students’ survivors reject the government’s claim.
But the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa Normal School students has also sparked a movement to find other victims of the ongoing drug-related violence in the state of Guerrero. Warring gangs battle for control of the state’s remote mountains, where poppy and cannabis are grown for drugs meant for export to the United States.
Published in Vice News on July 27th, 2015
by Chantal Flores; photos Prometeo Lucero and Marco Ugarte /AP