Mexican Small Farmers Stage Missing Students Protest

MEXICO CITY – Mexican small farmers on Friday carried out a protest in solidarity with the family members and classmates of trainee teachers who disappeared more than two months ago at the hands of corrupt police officers, using 43 tractors in the demonstration to symbolize each of the missing students.

The protest began at the El Angel monument at 11:45 a.m., covered a portion of the Paseo de la Reforma thoroughfare and was to end up at the interior ministry building, organizers told Efe.

Some 2,500 small farmers from 27 of 32 Mexican states took part in the march, according to El Barzon, the association that headed the demonstration.

Each tractor had a photograph of one of the students from the teachers college in Ayotzinapa, a village in the southern state of Guerrero, who were abducted Sept. 26 by municipal cops in the nearby town of Iguala.

Police officers from Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula detained those 43 students that night at the orders of Iguala’s mayor and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos gang, which killed them and burned the bodies to eliminate all traces of the victims, Mexican authorities say, citing statements by suspects in the case.

Corrupt municipal police targeted the students, according to some media accounts, after they had seized several buses for use in protests against education reform.

Upon their arrival at the interior ministry building, the march participants also will call on President Enrique Peña Nieto to enact reforms that close the gap between the prices paid to small farmers and the retail price in the marketplace.

Small farmers are increasingly more “indebted,” even as the big monopolies become wealthier, according to El Barzon