The motive for the abduction and murder of students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School still remains a mystery. It is hard to believe that a group of local municipal police took it on themselves to shoot and kill and abduct the students.
Theories abound as to the reason for the massacre. It was political; it was because the students and teachers had refused to pay extortion to the United Guerreros cartel; it was the government trying to stifle dissent over education reforms.
Like the many mysteries in Mexico, the real truth of what and why it happened may never be known. To name only few;
Unanswered questions still surround the Tlateloclco (Plaza of the Tres Culturas) massacre of students in Mexico City in 1968 10 days before the Olympic Games were scheduled to start in the Capitol City. In that confrontation between govt. forces and students the govt. claims that 30 were killed. Eyewitnesses said there were hundreds murdered. At least 1200 arrested. (Perhaps the best English language presentation of that atrocity is the video link following this story.)
The Acteal Massacre was a massacre of 45 people attending a prayer meeting of Roman Catholicindigenous townspeople, including a number of children and pregnant women, who were members of the pacifist group Las Abejas("The Bees"), in the small village of Acteal in the municipality of Chenalhó, in the Mexicanstate of Chiapas. It was carried out on December 22, 1997 by the paramilitary group Mascara Roja, or Red Mask. Some of the pregnant women who were part of the prayer group were stabbed and shot in the belly intentionally to kill their unborn children. The slaughter was carried out over a number of hours even though there was an army base stationed in a nearby village. The next morning soldiers were seen washing down the walls of the church trying to remove evidence of the attack. The role of the federal government in the attack is still a controversy. In 2014 the US Supreme Court turned down a case filed by the survivors of Acteal Massacre against Connecticut resident and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on grounds of "sovereign Immunity" as a former head of state[3]
Who killed Colosio and who ordered it? In 1994 the PRI candidate for President of the Republic of Mexico was assassinated while campaigning in Juarez. Even though he was handpicked by President Salinas by the “tap on the shoulder” to be the PRI candidate, after he started campaigning he started talking to aides and in campaign trail about his plans to clean up PRI and rid the govt. of corruption. Was he really murdered by a lone nut. and was his death ordered by powers that were uncomfortable with his plans for revitalizing Mexico?
Will the abductions and murders of the students in Iguala become another of those mysteries that permeate Mexican history?
After reading hundreds of stories on the events of that day I have come to the conclusion that the wife of Mayor, Jose Luis Abarca initiated the tragedy.
 |
| the loving couple |
SETTING THE STAGE
In photographs and videos taken on the afternoon of September 26 before the tragedy occurred, 3,000 people were bused in, a shrine is decorated with flowers on a stage featuring an enlarged photograph of María de los Ángels Pineda Villa, the wife of PRD mayor José Luis Abarca. It was the setting for her to give her first report as president of DIF [National System for Comprehensive Development of the Family]. After the speech making by her and other dignataries a fiesta was scheduled.
She had recently, on Sept. 7, been selected by the PRD to be a counselor (minister) to the State PRD governing council. This was all part of a carefully orchestrated plan to put herself in a position to succeed her husband as Mayor of Iguala in the elections coming up in 5 months. Considering her ambition and ties to “powerful interest” (more on that in a moment), this was probably just a stepping stone to higher state and federal offices.
WHO IS THIS LADY
José Luis and María de los Ángeles became wealthy in the gold business that created manynouveaux riche in this city during the nineties. Both became owners of dozens of shops in the jewelry center and of a commercial plaza, of houses and ranches. Due to their close ties with Lázaro Mazón, the current Secretary of Health, Abarca was selected as the PRD [mayoral] candidate, the party that he joined, and with which he won the election and in which his wife rose to be counselor.
Various Guerrero PRD leaders say the mayor's wife is a woman of "hard and difficult" character, taking many decisions at City Hall and was feared by many.
"She ruled the roost in the town, the mayor did everything she wanted," says CNNMéxico a state leader of the National Unity of the Left (UNI), a domestic political group of the PRD, who requested anonymity for fear reprisals.
The PRD reports that since the beginning of the administration of José Luis Abarca , a municipal trustees Carbajal Justin Salgado, had complained to the state leadership of the PRD that it was the first lady of Iguala that made the decisions.
"Justin is filed complaints ... long complained that the mayor's wife then wanted to give orders," says the PRD, who recalls that the Justin was murdered in his home by gunmen in March last year.
Another PRD, close to the mayor and his wife, agrees with this version and says that many were afraid to criticize the first lady and her interference in the municipal administration.
"What we know and the information we have been given by peers who work at City Hall, many PRD, is that the lady made decisions, important decisions in the management of affairs in the council," says this other source, on the condition that his name be omitted.
The president of the State Council of the PRD, Ilich Lozano recognized that in many of the meetings of the party, mayor José Luis Abarca always presented with the first lady.
"She was a person who was always glued to the mayor, so there was also living with her, I must say in all candor, do not avoid the reality," he says.
POWERFUL CONNECTIONS
Mary of the Angels Pineda, or Lady Iquala, is part of a family that has had close ties to the Beltran Leyva cartel and now the Los according to Alejandro Encinas, Senator leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, is the sister of Alberto Pineda Villa, "El Borrado", former operator with the deceased capo Arturo Beltran Leyva, and of Salomon Pineda, "El Molon", the current boss of a cell working for the Guerreros Unidos group.
As reported by un Vato in an earlier story on BB, In the criminal investigation PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/0241/2008, initiated during the administration of former president Felipe Calderon, "El Borrado" is named as the liaison between high level officials with the SIEDO and the Beltran Leyva cartel, "who would receive information about investigations against them in exchange for payments in excess of $450,000.00 per month," Proceso published in 2009. [SIEDO is the federal agency charged with investigating organized crime).
Rubido Garcia , the national security advisor, stated that the Guerreros Unidos "are linked to a criminal cell led by Salomon Pineda Villa, "El Molon", the younger brother of the wife of the PRD mayor of Iguala, who [Pineda Villa] was in prison in the federal penitentiary of Tamaulipas andreleased just last year.
Attorney General of Guerrero, Iñaky White Cabrera, said Thursday that there is no investigation against María Pineda Villa, or any order or capture location. Osario Chong, the Secretary of the Interior (with responsibility for national security) said in an interview when asked about charges being filed against the mayor’s wife, said that he couldn’t investigate someone just based on kinship.
At the entrance of the Municipal Building and in documents, the mayor's wife never uses her maiden name, which links her directly to her brothers Salomón Pineda Villa, El Molón, territory boss of Guerreros Unidos; Alberto Pineda Villa, El Borrado, and Mario Pineda Villa, El MP, former operators of the slain Beltrán Leyva [cartel] and with María Leonor Villa Orduño, whom they said is her mother and operator and front for the capo.
THE COUPLE DANCED WHILE THE POLICE WERE SHOOTING THE STUDENTS
Everything was going according to plan. The crowd of 3000 that had been bused in that afternoon to show support for the mayors wife were awaiting for the party to start while she finished her speech elaborating all she accomplished to help the people during the last year as head of the local DIF. At her side, in the front row, sat the chief of the 27 Infantry Battalion, Colonel Juvenal Mariano García.
A group of tough looking civilians who had been guarding Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, a woman with alleged family ties to organized crime were standing close to the stage (shrine) which had been set up for her. A police force that state and federal officials accuse of being infiltrated by drug gangs patrolled the streets
One of the tough looking guys came discreetly on to the stage and whispered to her that the students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college were moving toward the Plaza where her gala was being held. She told him “STOP THEM”.
On the afternoon of September 26, students from Ayotzinapa teachers college arrived in Iguala to ask for money [donations] to attend the annual October 2 demonstration in Mexico City [marking the 1968 Student Massacre in Tlatelolco]. They took buses from the terminal to transport them, since in Chilpancingo they had been impeded. They were not in Iguala to protest, but to raise money for their trip, which was a common practice.
Most of the students at the teachers college are indigenous and come from very poor families. The school has been described as hotbed of radical activist, but it has also been in the forefront of many demands for equal rights, more student and teacher involvement in setting curriculum and school administration, and free speech. Their methods may at times seem radical (such as commandeering the bus to get back home), but when you consider they are from a class of people who have been ignored by the government and sometimes by society in general, radical methods are sometimes needed to get attention to their demands for an opportunity of a better life.
I don’t think the mayors wife actually gave the order to abduct or kill the students, but journalists who attended the event recall that at the height of the dance (after Lady Iquala gave the order to her henchmen to stop the students) near the Zócalo [Town Plaza] a shot was heard few blocks away, but they don't know who fired it. Shopkeepers lowered their metal gates.
The students were aboard three buses headed toward the exit of the city, but on the Beltway they were ambushed by a score of patrol cars with the now familiar outcome.
"The mayor lost control. His old lady was so mad that they were spoiling her act, that she made it easy for him to give the order to her brother El Molón, who commanded he Guerreros Unidos to seize 'the ayotzinapos' and knock the hell out of them said one journalist.
 |
| Mayor Abarca |
They knew they could act with impunity. After all, EPN had stated less than 2 weeks before the massacre that the violence happening in Guerrero was “local issue”.
A previous President of Mexico said “Nothing happens in Mexico until "IT" happens. In popular vernacular and using an English idiom “When the shit hits the fan it goes everywhere".
Her order to stop them (the IT) has mushroomed into something she never expected -. a night of violence that left six people dead, 25 wounded and 43 missing.
Once "It" happens things can get out of hand very rapidly and mushroom very rapidly. Outrage and fury swept across Mexico and around the world almost overnight.
 |
| cities in Mexico where there were demonstrations denouncing the killings and disappearance of students |
Even EPN changed his tune about the problems in Guerrero being a local issue. More than 400 police and gendarmes were dispatched to patrol streets and man checkpoints with an unspecified number of soldiers.
I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND I AM HERE TO HELP YOU
"Good afternoon, God bless you. The gendarmerie is here," said an officer waving at people from his truck window.
While Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, along with the chief of police have left town and appear to be in hiding, the mushroom cloud is still expanding. Maybe time will tell how much fall out there will be and who gets covered in the stuff that hit the fan.
