Missing students in Mexico — Where is the US?

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has come to the proverbial fork in the road. Will he shrug his shoulders and wave off 43 missing students and the two dozen bodies of young people found outside the town of Iguala in the state of Guerrero or will he turn the many resources of the Mexican government, with American help, to find out who killed them, and then arrest and punish?

For those unaware of Iguala and Guerrero, they are south of Mexico City, about 100 miles on the highway to Acapulco. The Mexicans call the land around Iguala and on to Acapulco Tierra Caliente — hot land — home to Mexican Indians, small subsistence farmers and fruit pickers, millions of native wild avocado (aguacate) trees, and vicious drug and violent gangs bent on controlling the Tierra Caliente for fun and profit.

{mosads}The area is also full of javelina wild pigs, feral pigs, jaguars and tropical deer. Another 100 miles south on the highway lies the worn-out former world-famous resort of Acapulco. The highway and 50 feet on either side is the only area observed by and/or controlled by official Mexico. Everything else is controlled by the narco-trafficantes — drug cartel gangsters and local police forces on their payroll.

Last month, 43 politically active “leftist” students (male and female) hijacked a school bus to return them to their small campus. They disappeared before they arrived.

Coincidently, 46 years ago, almost to the day, protesting students were massacred in an old Spanish square in Mexico City just weeks before the 1968 Olympics opened in the city. As the Revolutionary Party (the PRI) ran the government and its security forces, no one has even been able to document exactly how many students were killed. Officially less than two dozen were killed by radical gunmen and provocateurs, but many Mexicans believe that Mexican government secret agents provoked the killings. No one will ever know how many died that day, 46 years ago in an old Spanish square in Mexico City. Is it deja vu all over again.

So far, 22 local police officers have been detained by state and federal judicial police. Judicial police investigate crimes against people. President Nieto and his attorney eneral are sending federal police into the area in force to investigate the crime and they are using a neutral Argentinian forensics team to identify the 28 bodies found in six adjacent graves.

A local drug cartel leader called “El Chucky” has been identified as the man who gave the order to kill the students, if that is what happened and can be believed of the lowly local officers in custody.

There is little doubt that the officers being interrogated are telling the truth for federal police are world famous for their interrogations. Interrogated suspects generally tell the truth after their heads are immersed in filthy unflushed toilets several times. And as there are no Miranda warnings in Mexico, suspects don’t have lawyers at interrogations.

For Hollywood horror addicts, El Chucky is so named for an infamous wooden talking murderous doll called “Chucky” in a horror flick of some years ago.

The question is, will President Pena Nieto really honestly pursue the mass murderers, arrest them and send them away for the maximum Mexican prison term of 40 years?

So far, the only suspects in custody are 22 police officers. Certainly, 22 lowly officers are not what the Mexicans call the “intellectual authors” of the mass murder. Someone higher up ordered the murders, either on their own or under orders from El Chucky or his bosses in Mexico City, perhaps.

Can or will the Mexican government headed by Pena Nieto investigate and solve this mass murder?

If President Obama had any political sensitivity or good CIA intelligence from the large expensive Mexico City CIA office, he would offer the resources of the FBI to President Pena Nieto.

While at it, he could ask Pena Nieto to order the release of the former U.S. Marine, Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who has been in a Tijuana prison since May for the heinous crime of reporting to Mexican authorities that he made a mistake and drove into Mexico with three firearms that are illegal in Mexico when possessed by civilians.

Contreras formerly wrote for the New American News Service of The New York Times.