Amid all the recent commotion over Ebola in Dallas, it might have been easy to miss a shocking story from Mexico: the Sept. 26 mass kidnapping of 43 student teachers in the city of Iguala. Their disappearance and suspected massacre should not fade from Americans’ attention, regardless of the health care crisis at our doorstep.
Many politicians in Washington now view the Ebola crisis as a national security concern, along with immigration and fears that Islamic State jihadists could exploit disorder in Mexico to sneak into the United States. As American xenophobia rises, the U.S.-Mexico border becomes, again, a focal point of concern.
Mexico must not feed the fear mongering by furthering its reputation for lawlessness. President Enrique Peña Nieto should step up and demonstrate clearly that his government forces maintain sovereign control over all Mexican territory. Mexicans, and the world, should expect nothing less.
Unfortunately, criminal gangs and drug cartels have made Swiss cheese of that notion. The mass kidnapping in Iguala, about 120 miles south of Mexico City, exposes how drug gangs are imposing their will — not just at the violence-plagued border but deep within the Mexican heartland. The student teachers, all young men, had been involved in a protest over national education reforms. The fact that the student teachers were defending a corrupt status quo, and had commandeered buses as part of their protest, was no justification for what befell them.
Police believed to be under the control of a big drug cartel in Guerrero state opened fire to halt the protesters, then drove survivors away in the darkness. Authorities searching for them uncovered mass graves outside Iguala containing the remains of more than 28 people, but they appear unrelated to the kidnappings.
The mayor of Iguala, a city of about 150,000, has gone into hiding. His wife’s three brothers have been among Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords, linked to the notorious Beltran Leyva cartel. The gang’s leader, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, was captured Oct. 1.
Iguala’s story is a snapshot of what is occurring in other Mexican towns and cities — anywhere cartels can spread their tentacles into tourism, shipping, petroleum and international commerce. Human trafficking and kidnappings are at record highs. The U.S. State Department has issued a travel advisory warning Americans to defer all nonessential travel to Guerrero except for five cities, including the big tourist resort of Acapulco.
Peña Nieto acknowledges that the events in Iguala are unacceptable and vows not to let impunity prevail. Such words are hardly new from the mouth of a Mexican president. What Americans need to see, especially at a time of deepening international instability, is that the nation on our southern border isn’t contributing to the chaos.
