The Families Of Mexico’s Missing Students Are Now Living In Their School
The Families Of Mexico’s Missing Students Are Now Living In Their School
Nearly a dozen families have for months now made a home in the classrooms of the teachers’ college where 43 students studied before disappearing in September. Many say they won’t leave until their loved ones return.
posted on April 29, 2015, at 3:18 p.m.
TIXTLA, Mexico — Benigna Arzola’s house, eight hours by bus from this small town in southeastern Mexico, lies abandoned, dust coating the property and weeds overtaking the maize and bean harvest.
For seven months, Arzola has been living in a classroom at the all-male school where her son had been studying when he was abducted, along with 42 others, by local police. Arzola shares her new home — a sterile classroom with four brand-new mattresses on the floor — with three other families. She has been back to her hometown only twice in those seven months, she says, and will not return permanently until her son, Luis Angel, returns and the family is once again complete.
Her husband and two other children roam the grounds of the school, called Escuela Normal Rural “Raúl Isidro Burgos,” waiting for news that seems less likely to come with each passing day. They have been living for months with little information and minimal contact with authorities, relying instead on foreign experts and human rights groups for updates on the investigation into their son’s disappearance. They and other families hang on to hope springing from conspiracy theories, believing that the government is holding the students in a forced labor camp and will have no choice but to release them eventually.
There are nearly a dozen families like Arzola’s who left their homes, hundreds of miles away up and down a rugged mountain range in southeastern Mexico, when their sons disappeared in September after being rounded up by police and turned over to members of a criminal gang. Most have barely gone back since. This college, which is not only public but provides free housing, is the most appealing choice for men in this part of Mexico, home to the some of the country’s poorest communities, nestled in the mountains of Guerrero State, with its poppy fields and criminal gangs.
More:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/karlazabludovsky/the-families-of-mexicos-missing-students-are-now-living-in-t#.mnPEYWZND
Sad, sad story. So many have been harmed by their hideous government.