IGUALA, Mexico — On the day 43 students disappeared in this southern Mexican town, the mayor's wife was giving a speech to local dignitaries on family social services.
In another town, it could have been a normal scene. But tough-looking civilians guarded Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, a woman with alleged family ties to organized crime. A police force that state and federal officials accuse of being infiltrated by drug gangs patrolled the streets.
Into this combustible mix came the students from a radical rural teacher's college that had defied drug cartel extortion in the past. Well-known for blocking highways and other protests, they arrived with plans to solicit donations from passers-by.
Many never made it back home after the Sept. 26 police attack that killed six and injured at least 25. Officials are conducting DNA tests to determine if some of the students are among 28 charred bodies found last weekend in freshly (
http://mashable.com/2014/10/06/stude...testers-mexico ) discovered mass graves.
Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca is now a fugitive, and state officials have arrested 22 city officers. His wife's whereabouts are unknown. The possible massacre has focused attention on the extent to which local police forces such as Iguala's are permeated by organized crime.
Pineda, the mayor's wife, is from a family with known ties to the Beltran Leyva cartel. Prosecutors had identified her late brother, Alberto Pineda, as a main lieutenant in the cartel. He and another brother, Marco Pineda, both on former President Felipe Calderon's most-wanted list, were killed by rivals in 2009.
Another brother, Salomon Pineda, was released from prison last year and is believed to be running the
Guerreros Unidos cartel in
Iguala, an offshoot of the Beltran Leyva group, according to local media.
"Everyone knew about their presumed connections to organized crime," Alejandro Encinas, a senator from the mayor's Democratic Revolution Party, told The Associated Press. "Nobody did anything, not the federal government, not the state government, not the party leadership."
President Enrique Pena Nieto ordered a special federal police force to take over Iguala as his top security officials rushed to contain a smear on the image of stability and falling crime rates that they've projected to the outside world.
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