Mexican Soldiers Intimidate, Threaten Students Outside Iguala

At a checkpoint south of Iguala in the southern violent state of Guerrero, members of the 27^th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army on Tuesday ordered the bus driver to stop and told the Teloloapan students to get off. 

The soldiers lined the students up facing the bus, where they searched them and made insulting, humiliating remarks, especially to the young girls. They threatened the entire group, around 30 students in all, for more than an hour.  

The troops specifically  warned the students that they’d better stop making trouble about the disappeared Ayotzinapa students, and then took pictures of each person. Afterward, they ordered them to go back to their school without causing any problems in Iguala.

The students had left Teloloapan early that morning for Chilpancingo to stage a protest at the nearby Palo Blanco toll booth on the Mexico City-Acapulco freeway and ask motorists for contributions. They were on their way back to Teloloapan when their bus was stopped about 4:00 p.m., according to news magazine Proceso.

The 27^th Battalion has been in the news ever since the police attack on the Ayotzinapa students last September 26 because they did nothing to prevent the massacre and the disappearances of the 43 students. They were told about the first shooting incident and did nothing to stop the second attack that happened several hours later.

The Teloloapan students are members of the United Front of Public Teacher Training Schools in the State of Guerrero, made up of students from nine schools. They told reporters that they believe the soldiers were trying to intimidate them in order to put an ind to the protests they have been organizing to demand justice in the Ayotzinapa case. 

Accordingly, they announced that on Wednesday, November 19, they are going to march through the streets of Teloloapan, a town beset by drug-related violence, where the authorities are believed to have ties to organized crime.