A group of armed men disguised in masks and wearing black clothes entered Miranda Edmonds’ family home in Mexico two years ago and abducted her uncle, who had been out planting a tree with his son.
Her uncle has not been found since, she said. From members of her community in Mexico, Edmonds said she has heard dark rumors about what happened to her uncle, but she doesn’t want to believe them.
“We refuse to accept (what we hear) because it hurts too much. It is more comforting to think that he is still out there,” she said.
Edmonds, a third-year history and political science student, shared her story Wednesday during a memorial and protest in which some members of the Mexican community at UCLA expressed frustration toward the Mexican government in response to the recent disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero.
Dozens of Mexican UCLA students held the memorial and protest outside Kerckhoff Hall in honorof the missing students. The protest called for an end to what students and faculty members described as corruption in the Mexican government and the atrocities they say the government has been involved in.
During the protest, students shared their experiences with and grievances toward the Mexican government, with particular focus on the students kidnapped in Guerrero.
According to The Independent, students from the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, a teachers’ college, were protesting against the local government on Sept. 26 when they clashed with police. It is unclear exactly what happened during the students’ confrontation with police, but many reports say police handed the students off to gang members, who may have executed them.
Authorities have arrested 74 people in connection with the kidnappings, including the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda, both of whom are accused of ordering the kidnappings. There are at least 10 more suspects who have not been arrested, Mexico’s Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said during a press conference.
The kidnapping has caused outrage around Mexico and in Mexican communities in the United States.
The students present at Wednesday’s protest held placards with messages such as “UCLA Student With Guerrero,” “Nunca Más,” which stands for “Never Again” in Spanish,and “Where Are They?”
During the event, students expressed their outrage atwhat they described as corruption in the Mexican government.
“These atrocities are happening just a couple (hundred) miles down south,” Edmonds said. “This is not happening across the globe. We cannot let this violence continue.”
Maria Vazquez-Semadeni, an associate adjunct professor of Latin American history at UCLA, said she thinks the kidnappings in Guerrero is part of a wider pattern of similar events in Mexico over the past decades.
“I am a Mexican, and I love my country … but it is outrageous and impossible to believe what is going on there,” she said. “These 43 students are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, an associate professor of Chicana/o studies, said he thinks the Mexican federal government has little power over the actions of local governments.
“This (kidnapping) is an indication of how – at the local level – the drug cartels have established a stronghold over local governments. And the federal government is relatively powerless and complicit,” he said.
Hinojosa-Ojeda said he thinks the very poor areas of Mexico are particularly vulnerable because cartels may bribe local police forces to let them do what they want. It is estimated that more than 70,000 people have disappeared or died in the past 10 years because of drug cartel wars, he said.
“The question is, is (the disappearance of the Guerrero students) a turning point?” Hinojosa-Ojeda said.
Speaking after the memorial and protest, Michelle Salinas, a fourth-year Latin American studies student who helped organize the event, said she hopes the event educated students about what she calls corruption in Mexico and increased solidarity on campus, especially within the Mexican population at UCLA.
Salinas also hopes the protests at UCLA encourage the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles to put pressure on the Mexican government to act quickly in response to the kidnappings.
Hinojosa-Ojeda said he is optimistic aboutthe effects of protests at UCLA and around the U.S.
“The fact that there is a grassroots upsurge of protests in the United States will have an added impact on the Mexican government, because the United States is so important to Mexico,” he said. “There will be added urgency, and the Mexican government will know that they cannot sweep this under the rug.”