On Monday, August 22nd, 2022, two unidentified people pulled up on a blue motorcycle and gunned a man to death in his own car in broad daylight. This man was a journalist named Fredid Román who was just leaving his home in Guerrero, Mexico. 53 days prior to Román’s death, on July 1st, 2022, Román’s son, Bladimir “N”, was executed in the nearby town of Ocotito.
These events still underscore the level of violence and brutality that runs rampant in Mexico. Román was the 15th journalist killed in 2022, marking the deadliest year for Mexican journalists since data first began to be recorded in 1992. In fact, Mexico is now considered the most dangerous country for reporters outside of a war zone.
While it remains unknown if there was any connection between Bladimir’s death and his father, Román’s, many suspect that the killings are linked to a story that Roman had published just hours before his death. Román’s journalism focused heavily on state-level politics in Guerrero, Mexico where drug cartels, armed vigilantes and other groups regularly clash. In his final publication, Román criticized the Ayotzinapa Truth Commission — an independent federal body created to investigate the mass abduction of 43 students in Guerrero.
This mass abduction event, also known as the Iguala Mass Kidnappings, is considered one of the worst human rights disasters in Mexican history. On September 26th, 2014, more than 100 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero, Mexico traveled to Iguala to engage in a series of peaceful protest. Founded in 1926, the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College is an all-male school that has historically been associated with student activism.
The student-teachers from Ayotzinapa … planned to join an upcoming march in Mexico City. Initially, the students attempted to walk through Chilpancingo, but state and federal authorities had blocked the routes that led to the capital. Instead, the students decided to go to Iguala where the mayor’s wife was promoting her campaign to become the next mayor.
While the students were at Iguala, they decided to visit the local bus terminal in order to commandeer buses so they could make their way to Mexico City. Note that the commandeering of buses by student activists is a tactic that has been largely normalized throughout the years and is generally tolerated by local bus companies and law enforcement. Details of the events that followed vary depending on who is telling the story.
A 2015 documentary titled Ayotzinapa: crónica de un crimen de estado (“Ayotzinapa: chronicle of a state crime”) … covers firsthand accounts of that evening’s events - from the perspective of some of the survivors. The documentary even includes some footage of that evening, recorded by some of the surviving students. After comparing witness accounts from the documentary with various news articles, here is an online summary of the events of that evening.
At some point in the evening, the students commandeered buses from the bus station at Iguala and began to travel north on C. Juan N Álvarez Street. Around 9:30 pm, before reaching the Periférico Norte (#51 highway), the students were intercepted by police, who began firing at them.
One witness described a scene that sounds like it came out of a movie, with officers sitting halfway out of their window aiming at the buses and firing upon them without warning. It’s suspected that two students were killed by the initial gunfire. Upon reaching the Periférico Norte (#51 highway) the students encountered a police vehicle blockading the road.
Recorded events show the students shouting at the police to let them pass. After a short standoff, (where it’s claimed that the students threw water bottles and stones at the police cruiser), the police vehicle allegedly moved and allowed the buses onto the Periférico Norte (#51 highway). However, shortly after reaching the highway, the students encountered a full municipal police blockade.
At this second blockade, the students began exiting the buses in another attempt to ask the police to clear the road so that they could pass. However, the police began to open fire upon the unarmed student body. At this point, the students dropped to the ground and crawled to take cover behind the busses.
Some students ran out into the fields in an attempt to escape. Of the students fleeing on foot, two more were killed by gunfire. More police began to descend upon the students, striking them with weapons and kicking them while they're on the ground.
In a related events, unidentified gunmen were said to mistake another bus in the area for the ones that had been commandeered. Without confirming anything, these gunmen opened fire, hitting the bus and two nearby taxis. In the bus, the driver, along with a high school soccer student, died and a woman in one of the taxis also died.
According to witness testimonies, these events took place starting from 9:30 p. m. and lasting through the morning.
Some say that the police never stopped shooting at students who were fleeing the scene. Nobody understood the reasons for such police brutality. Especially since commandeering busses was already accepted as a local tradition for student protesters.
Some found it curious that the army did not intervene to protect the students. The events occurred so close to the Army base that witnesses claim they would be able to hear the gunfire at the base. The following morning, authorities discovered the corpse of one of the students who fled on foot.
Julio César Mondragón. His body showed signs of torture with the face skinned, eyes gouged out, and the ears and nose removed before he died of brain injuries. In total, six people were killed and 25 were wounded during this initial clash with the police.
Yet nobody understood the reasons for such violence. Witnesses claim that many of the students were rounded up by police and taken to the police station in Iguala. From there, they were transferred to the police station in Cocula.
From Cocula, it is said that deputy police chief César Nava González ordered the transport of the students to a rural community known as Pueblo Viejo. Student activists accused authorities of illegally holding the missing students before they were turned over to the gangs. However, authorities refuted these claims, saying that the students were never in custody.
After the transport of the students, they were handed over by police to a mexican criminal syndicates called Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors). Reports show that the police and the United Warriors suspected the students of being part of another local gang called Los Rojos, or The Red Ones. While the involvement of the police in this matter is appalling, witnesses claimed that soldiers in the Mexican army were also involved.
The military complex of the 27th Infantry Battalion is located a few minutes away from Juan N. Alvarez street, where the shootout took place. This claim echoes the testimony of one of the survivors in the Ayotzinapa documentary, who described how the military interrogated a separate group of students that had escaped the kidnaping.
“A short while later, the Army showed up. Why are they showing up now? They didn't even show up during the first two attacks, not even when one of the attackers shot up a bus that had nothing to do with us.
A bus full of athletes, a soccer team. The Army shows up looking for us in the hospital. They accuse us.
What are you talking about? We weren't doing anything wrong. The police shot at us.
We have an injured party. ” During the interrogation, a military officer allegedly referred to them as delinquents. Said that they deserved what was happening to them due to “the things they do” and that the community was fed up with their behavior.
It's worth mentioning that during this interrogation, one of the students who had been bleeding out for a couple of hours was prevented from receiving medical treatments by the military officials who commanded the students to “shut up” when they requested aid. As the group continued to insist that the military allowed the injured students to be treated, one of the officials made a phone call and claimed that help was on the way. But it never arrived.
After collecting the personal information of everyone in the group, the military officials simply left after telling the group to remain where they are because police are on the way. Naturally, the group who had just been persecuted by the police all night without reason decided to leave. They headed to the nearest hospital trying to seek medical aid for the injured students, and they all took turns carrying him since he could not walk well in his condition.
According to the student that was interviewed, the injured student was walking with a limp, missing the upper half of his jaw and was in a mental state of confusion. According to investigators and official reports, the group of kidnapped students were taken to a garbage dump on the outskirts of Cocula, to be killed on the orders of Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, the top leader of the United Warriors. It's claimed that the bodies of the students were all dumped into a pits, burned with diesel, gasoline, tires, wood and plastic, and that their clothing was also destroyed to erase all evidence.
After putting out the fire, the remaining bones were reportedly smashed into pieces, placed into garbage bags and dumped in the San Juan River in Cocula on orders of Felipe Rodríguez Salgado (alias “El Terco”). A text message from Gildardo López Astudillo (alias “El Cabo Gil”) was sent to Casarrubias Salgado stating “We turned them into dust and threw their remains in the water. They [the authorities] will never find them.
Atudillo was second-in-command of the United Warriors. The gang members allegedly involved in the murder of the students were Patricio Reyes Landa, Jonathan Osorio Gómez and Agustín García Reyes. Of these members, Reyes Landa confessed to shooting four of the students in the neck and to providing the black garbage bags he used to dispose of the remains.
Parents of the missing 43 students did not believe the official reports, which stated that the students had been murdered. They believed their sons were still alive and that the government wanted to rush to close the case in order to counter public outrage. This led to further investigations and many search parties that resulted in discovery of a number of mass graves.
Due to the difficulty in identifying DNA of the remains that happened found, the federal government turned to a team of internationally renowned forensic specialists from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. However, to this day, only three of the students have been identified. Alexander Mora Venancio, Christian Alfonso Rodriguez and Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz.
The Iguala Mass Kidnaping is an event that drew worldwide attention and led to protests all across Mexico. Unlike previous corruption cases, this one is especially noteworthy because it demonstrated the extent of collusion between organized crime and local governments, including police agencies and even the military. Investigations are still ongoing to this day, and this events has become one of the most notorious cold cases in Mexico's history.
It's said that over 280 municipal police officers in Iguala were questioned with 22 officers from Guerrero arrested for the use of excessive or deadly force against the students. These officers were eventually imprisoned in a maximum security prison in Tepic, Nayarit under aggravated murder charges. Various members of the United Warriors were also arrested, including Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado and his brother José Ángel Casarrubias Salgado.
Further investigation into the incidents led people to suspect the involvement of the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca. The mayor's wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, is the sister of known members of another drug gang called the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. Before investigation concluded, the mayor and his wife fled the area and were declared fugitives.
The federal government later claimed that Mayor Abarca had ordered the arrest of the students to prevent them from obstructing his wife's speech. The attorney general's office described the mayor and his wife as the probable masterminds of the mass kidnaping, with the Iguala police force director, Felipe Flores Velasquez - Mayor Abarca’s cousin - as one of the main perpetrators in their investigation. The Mexican government discovered that the police force was paid $45,000 monthly to keep them on the cartel's payroll.
During the months after the mass kidnapping, A number of protests and support rallies occurred, some of which turned into riots. October 13th, 2014: Protesters ransacked and burned government offices and Chilpancingo, the capital, Guerrero. October 20th, 2014: Protesters set fire to an office of a state social assistance program called Guerrero Cumple, in Chilpancingo.
In Iguala, a number of protesters left a peaceful march of thousands of people, and broke into the city hall, destroying computers and setting fire to the building. The next day, 200 protesters set fire to the regional office of the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) in Chilpancingo. October 22nd, 2014: Over 50,000 protesters demonstrated support of the missing students, including actors, directors, writers, and producers.
They lit 43 candles on the steps of a theater in Morelia, Michoacán. November 9th, 2014: In response to a comment made by Mexico’s attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, protesters took to the streets with banners reading Ya me cansé (“I’ve had enough”) and chanting Fue el Estado (“It was the State”). November 20th, 2014: Relatives of the 43 missing students led mass protests in Mexico City demanding action from the government to find them.
Thousands of people took part in three protest marches in the capital. This protest escalated, with protesters eventually throwing rocks and petrol bombs at police officers, and police using water cannons to disperse the crowds. Students from other countries also demonstrated their support, including Venezuela and the state of Texas, with additional protests forming in London, Paris, Vienna, and Buenos Aires.
Following investigations, a number of high profile individuals were arrested for their connection to the mass kidnapping. October 18, 2014: Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado was arrested for ordering members of his gang to “proceed” against the students. November 4th, 2014: An elite squad of Federal Police arrested José Luis Abarca and his wife Pineda in Iztapalapa, Mexico City.
A woman named Noemí Berumen Rodríguez was also arrested for aiding the couple in their hiding. Later, in September 2022, Abarca and his wife were absolved of the crimes related to the mass kidnapping due to … lack of evidence. However, both remained imprisoned for other charges related to organized crime.
November 22nd, 2014: César Nava González was arrested for his involvement in the mass kidnapping and organized crime. January 15th, 2015: Felipe Rodríguez Salgado was arrested for his involvement in orchestrating the assassinations and disappearance of the missing students. May 7th, 2015: Francisco Salgado Valladares, the deputy police chief of Iguala, was arrested by the Federal Police in Cuernavaca, Morelos.
According to reports, Salgado Valladares had connections with the Guerreros Unidos gang and received bribes from them to hand out to other members of the police force. He was one of the most-wanted suspects in the case. September 17th, 2015: Gildardo López Astudillo was arrested for his involvement with the mass kidnappings and for ordering the execution and disappearance of the missing students.
November 11th, 2020: Capt. José Martínez Crespo was the first military officer arrested in connection with the disappearance of the students. January 24th, 2021: Luis Antonio Dorantes Macías was sentenced to prison for his involvement with the mass kidnapping.
August 19th, 2022: Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam was arrested in Mexico City and charged with “forced disappearance, torture, and obstruction of justice. ” September 15th, 2022: Army General José Rodríguez Pérez was arrested in connection to the missing students after being accused of playing a significant role in the kidnapping. Rodríguez Pérez is the highest-ranking military officer arrested in the case, with three other arrest warrants against members of the Mexican army having been issued.
He was a colonel at the time of the students’ disappearance. Over 111 people have been arrested in the case. Many of the arrests made after December 2018 were thanks to the investigations performed by the truth commission — a federal body created by then newly elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Possibly the most shocking aspect of this case is the involvement of the Mexican army. Many witnesses had been reporting the involvement of the Mexican army in the disappearance of the students. One of these witnesses, a journalist named Pablo Morrugares reported that he had clear evidence of military involvement in the attack on the students.
Unfortunately, Morrugares was murdered on August 2nd, 2020, just four months before the first army official was arrested. Many other witnesses against the army have been placed in witness protection. Given the sheer level of brutality against these students, it’s only natural to wonder why they were so aggressively attacked.
The official story is that José Luis Abarca thought the students were going to interrupt his wife’s political event and preemptively called police in order to detain them. However, many people disagree with this version of events. There was also the story that the government claimed they thought the students were part of a local gang called Los Rojos.
However, in 2015, a six month investigation was performed by a panel of experts assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The panel of experts concluded that the claim that the students were mistaken for gang members was “scientifically impossible. ” Some people believe that the students angered the Guerreros Unidos by not paying extortion money to the gang.
However, this also seems implausible. If this were the case, wouldn’t the gang extort the college instead of a small group of students? Out of all the theories out there, the one that seems most likely is the one brought forth by journalist Anabel Hernandez, who claimed that two of the busses commandeered by the students were secretly transporting heroin.
Hernandez stated that a drug lord ordered the colonel of the 27th Infantry Battalion to intercept the drugs and that the students and witnesses were simply killed as collateral damage. The event was allegedly covered up by the government, which is why the Army's involvement took so many years to prove. A possible connection to the scenario reported by Anabel Hernandez comes from various reports related to a drug ring between Mexico and the United States.
Mark Giuffre, a Chicago based DEA agents, stated that his office discovered an ongoing heroin, cocaine and cash smuggling operation between Chicago, Illinois, and Iguala, Guerrero. The smugglers allegedly used passenger busses with special bumpers filled with drugs that were sealed to prevent detection. John Gibler, an American journalist who predominantly writes from and about Mexico, interviewed Ayotzinapa student survivors.
Based on his investigation, he concluded the following: “. . .
the institutions tasked with investigating crimes of this nature, are the institutions carrying them out. Not a corrupt police officer or a corrupt local mayor — no. The local police, the state police, the federal police, the Mexican army, all working together, all using radio communication and using cell phone technology and using their official vehicles, wearing their official uniforms, acting in utter impunity.
” Crime runs rampant in Mexico. It's the fourth most crime-ridden country in the world and the second most dangerous country in the Americas, according to a report by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. Only Colombia, the Congo and Myanmar surpassed the levels of crime scene in Mexico.
Actually, according to a statistic. Data from February 2023, the top six most dangerous cities in the world are located in Mexico, with Celaya in the number one spot, followed by Tijuana. The case of the Iguala mass kidnaping is one of the wildest cases in Mexican history.
To this day, the investigation continues. We can only hope that someday the families of the 43 missing students will be able to find closure as the justice is served to the remaining involved parties.
