Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico, North America
Search Continues in Mexico for Missing Students
September 30, 2014 By Staff
Top Story — Police continue to search for over 50 missing students after deadly weekend clashes in Mexico’s Guerrero state left six dead and dozens wounded.
The violence began Friday night in the town of Iguala when students from the Ayotzipan teacher training college protested against the school’s unfair hiring practices. Members of the school’s student union claimed that after the protest they attempted to hitchhike back to Ayotzipan on local buses.
Authorities maintained the students were forcefully hijacking the vehicles, however, prompting them to pursue the students in a chase. Students from the school are known for their radical activism — seizing vehicles in particular.
Later in the night gunmen opened fire on several vehicles as well as a bus carrying a football team, killing at least six. It is unclear whether the gunmen were police who mistook the football team’s bus for that of the protesting students, but 22 officers are currently being held in connection with the violence. They have denied responsibility.
Several thousand teachers, family members and students from the college marched in Guerrero’s capital city of Chilpancingo on Monday in protest of the police violence. Protesters demanded justice for those killed and missing, and called for the resignation of Gov. Angel Aguirre. Some members of the group smashed the glass facade of the city’s capitol building.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Mexico’s most-wanted drug trafficker released photos of his meeting with the mayor of the city of Aquila, further evidence of criminal conduct on the part of Mexican officials.
- U.S. President Barack Obama has asked a federal judge to told hold a court hearing on the force-feedings of Guantanamo Bay detainees in secret, prompting suspicions of a cover-up.
Caribbean
- The U.N. awarded Dominican President Danilo Machado a medal for his work fighting hunger on the island.
- A total of 68,814 people have registered to legalize their immigration status in the Dominican Republic, according to Interior Minister Washington Gonzalez.
- The Cuban government’s recent banning of colognes named after revolutionary icons Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez highlights tensions between state ideology and commercial interests in the wake of economic reforms, according to The Pan American Post.
- Latin American presidents are pressuring the Obama administration to accept the presence of Cuban President Raul Castro at next year’s Organization of American States meeting in Panama.
Central America
- Costa Rican authorities announced the seizure of around 1,600 pounds of cocaine in two recent operations.
- In an op-ed for Al Jazeera America, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research Mark Weisbrot criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the role she played during the 2009 military coup in Honduras.
Andes
- Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, apologized for the shooting of two men working on an oil pipeline.
- There are at least eight people dead and many homes destroyed after an earthquake hit Peru on Sunday.
- BusinessWeek editor Paul Barret published his latest book this week on the legal fight between Chevron and Ecuador, in which he makes serious accusations of fraud against Steven Donzinger, the legal representative of Ecuadorian families in Amazonia. According to Donzinger, Barret and other critics of his work have been corrupted by Chevron.
Southern Cone
- Current President Dilma Rousseff could win second-round elections in Brazil with 47.7 percent of the vote against Marina Silva, according to the latest election poll.
- A hotel employee was held hostage on Monday by a guest for several hours in Brazil’s capital before being released to the police.
- A U.S. judge has ruled that Argentina is in “contempt of court” for refusing to repay the debt it owes to so-called “vulture funds”.
Image: Youtube
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[…] investigation reportedly uncovered state documents that show federal police officers knew the attack was ongoing and even shot at the students as they travelled on several buses toward a protest event […]
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