Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa Message Board - Another Day in Paradise Lost

I am not advocating people do not visit Zihua. I am advocating people educate themselves as to what is happening outside of the safe tourist zones in Guerrero.

According to the New York Times, "the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos (in Ayotzinapa) is a teacher college with radical roots, steeped in revolutionary ferment and slogans." It has also been called a "Revolutionary-era rural teachers college known nationally for the ardently leftist politics that guide everything the students do and study." This is the college from where the students in the Iguala massacre/disappearance come. Astonishingly, the mass graves appear NOT to contain the bodies of students but of other victims.

I am curious as to the nature of the radicalism and revolution. Does this refer to Marxism or is it Mexican revolutionary ferment? My understanding is that the guerrilla group(s) in Guerrero is Marxist.

The ferment seems to be spreading as students and their supporters set fire to the state government house and City Hall in Chilpancingo during street battles. The Federation of Socialist Rural Students took over three radio stations! One report said ten thousand teachers and sympathizers marched in Acapulco.

The Iguala massacre is NOT an isolated incident. A few months an army brigade in Tlatlaya in the state of Mexico executed 22 youths.

Every cloud has a lining of irony: some of the students state the purpose of the visit to Iguala was to ask for donations to support their planned trip to observe the annual commemoration of the 1968 Tlatelolco Student Massacre held on October 2 at the Zócalo in Mexico City.

Post reply

3399 views

I've already discussed both incidents previously if you care to look up the posts. Not everything is what it appears to be. At least one of the buildings burned appears to have been done by people pretending to be protestors but who could simply want official records to disappear for a number of reasons: to get away with stealing money is usually the #1 reason that comes to my mind.

As to the students, they have no ideology. They are from the poorest families and they want to become teachers. No one has a problem with that. But their schools, like most, are severely underfunded, so their classrooms have no desks and their dorms have no furniture or even working bathrooms. So they frequently take to the streets allegedly to collect funds. But they've also demanded immediate placement upon graduation without any sort of qualification testing. They've repeatedly stolen buses and blocked important highways and generally affected innocent third parties, so that as cold as it sounds, there are a lot of people who feel their schools are an anachronism and that in a sense their karma caught up with them, though of course they do not deserve to be shot or killed, just arrested for vandalism, theft, blocking public roads, and of course for the death of the gas station attendent two years ago when they set fire to a gas station during other demonstrations in Chilpancingo when a few of them were shot while blocking a highway.

The guerrilla groups are as diverse as can be, and some promote socialism, but most simply want the corrupt bastards out of office. You must understand the legacy of the PRI who usurped the Revolución and have pretty much run a political-party-mafia including the codification of laws and the building of institutions that seem designed to protect the corrupt and the influential organized criminals while persecuting the poor.

As to Tlatlaya, that was the Ejército. A different beast altogether.

Remember how Zapata died to see how the army fits into the scheme of things. And remember that the Armada was allowed to build their barracks on our hillside in an area where the land was worth millions yet they provided no notice, no permits, no plan. They simply built hideous barracks that reek of corruption covering up corruption.

This is the same old same old. The Guerrero you visit today is just like the Guerrero of the Guerra Sucia back in the late 60's and throughout the 70's and 80's. Frankly I'm surprised any tourist development such as Ixtapa was ever contemplated for this region. What were they thinking inviting foreigners here to see how corrupt public servants and narcos work hand in hand to build themselves a better world?

As long as there is a multi-billion dollar a year black market to keep our northern neighbor supplied with stupidly-banned substances that BIG PHARMA and BIG ALCOHOL don't want competition from, then nothing is going to change for the better here. NOTHING.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with YOU!

http://youtu.be/DohRa9lsx0Q