What really happened in that massacre of students in Mexico? Forty three missing. Mexico laid bare. We’ll investigate.

A woman places a candle on photos of the missing students during a protest against the disappearance of 43 students from the Isidro Burgos rural teachers college, in Mexico City, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. Tens of thousands marched in Mexico City’s main avenue demanding the return of the missing students. (AP)

If you thought mass graves and torture were just Islamic State issues these days – far away and unthinkable – look closer to home.  To Mexico.  Last month, just a hundred miles south of Mexico City, 43 young college students from the countryside were rounded up and “disappeared” in a town where officials and drug lords are all wrapped up together.  All kinds of bodies have now been found.  Burned.  Face peeled.  Eyes torn out.  Even for Mexico, this is too much.  Too far.  The country is in uproar.  This hour On Point:  the inside story of the outrage in Iguala, and what’s wrong in Mexico.

– Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Tracy Wilkinson, Mexico bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. (@TracyKWilkinson)

Andrew Selee, executive vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Author of “Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico.” Co-editor of “Mexico and the United States” and “Mexico’s Democratic Challenges.” (@SeleeAndrew)

Anabel Hernandez, Mexican investigative journalist. Author of the book, “Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers.” Contributor to Reporte Indigo.

From Tom’s Reading List

Los Angeles Times: Mexico governor steps down over missing students — “The disappearance of 43 students at the hands of police working with drug gangs claimed the scandal’s first major political casualty Thursday with the resignation of Angel Aguirre, governor of the state of Guerrero, where the attacks took place.”

Newsweek: 22,322 People Have Vanished in Mexico’s Drug War — “The number of people who have disappeared since the beginning of the drug war in Mexico has risen to 22,322, Assistant Attorney General Mariana Benitez said Thursday, up from a reported 8,000 in May. Between December 1, 2012, the day Pena Nieto assumed office, and July 31, 13,444 have been located, bringing the number of disappeared during the president’s first year-and-a-half of his six-year term in office to 9,790, said Benitez.”

Washington Post: Hunt for 43 students highlights Mexico’s missing – “Long before 43 teachers college students disappeared in an attack by police, Maria Guadalupe Orozco’s son went missing in the same southern Mexico city of Iguala. Orozco says Mexican soldiers took Francis Garcia Orozco as he was ferrying equipment between a nightclub and the fairgrounds for a festival, an assertion based on witnesses and grainy security camera footage that day in March 2010. The military denied it.”