Outrage Over Likely Massacre Pressures Mexico’s President

By Eric Martin and Jose Enrique Arrioja

Indignation over the apparent killings of 43 college students, blamed on a drug gang working with police and a mayor, is increasing pressure on President Enrique Pena Nieto to improve security in Mexico.
A protest in Mexico City turned violent over the weekend, with mask-wearing demonstrators using Molotov bombs to set fire to the main doors of the National Palace that houses Mexico’s Finance Ministry and one of Pena Nieto’s offices. The attack followed a march by 3,000 people from the attorney general’s office to the capital’s main square, where protesters shouted “Pena out,” according to El Universal newspaper.
After focusing on Mexico’s economy since his 2012 election, Pena Nieto must make citizens feel safe in a nation where organized crime controls large areas and
sometimes works with corrupt officials, analyst Alejandro Schtulmann said.
“The country cannot progress only on economic reform of energy and telecommunications if you don’t address fundamentals like rule of law and public security,” Schtulmann, president and head of research at Mexico City-based political risk consulting firm EMPRA, said in a telephone interview. “I don’t see any development on the horizon that is suddenly going to make this disappear.”
Drug-related violence has left more than 70,000 dead or missing since 2006, according to Milenio newspaper. Central bank Governor Agustin Carstens said in an interview last month that drug violence is hurting growth, citing monthly Banco de Mexico analyst surveys showing public-security problems as the top obstacle to expansion.
The bank unexpectedly cut its benchmark rate to a record-low 3 percent in June to bolster growth that has missed economists’ forecasts in seven of the past nine quarters.

Mass Graves

Citizen discontent is growing after Attorney General Jesus Murillo said on Nov. 7 that the students were probably killed after being kidnapped by police in the southern city of Iguala, Guerrero, to stop them from disrupting an event featuring the mayor’s wife. DNA tests are being conducted on burned human remains found stuffed in garbage bags in a river, Murillo said.
The investigation into the missing students, who were protesting an education overhaul approved last year, has turned up at least nine mass graves and evidence of collusion between the Guerreros Unidos cartel and local officials in Iguala, a city of more than 100,000 people less than three hours’ drive from Mexico City. The disappearances on Sept. 26-27 followed shootings in Iguala that left six people dead.
While making a stop in Alaska en route to an official trip to China and Australia, Pena Nieto yesterday condemned the protesters’ attack on the National Palace.
“You cannot demand justice acting with violence,” he said, according to the Reforma newspaper. Phone calls and e-mails seeking comment from Pena Nieto press officials were not immediately returned.

Radicalized Protests

The government’s response to the Iguala incident will help determine whether the protests continue, said Sergio Luna, the chief Mexico economist at Citigroup Inc.’s Banamex unit.
“The delicate issue here is the radicalization of the protests,” Luna said in a phone interview from Mexico City. “If we want to enter into the modern world we need not only economic reforms, we also need reforms in politics and justice.”
Economists have cut their projections for Mexico’s growth this year, saying the nation is likely to expand 2.5 percent, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey, down from 3.4 percent at the start of the year. While that’s more than the 0.3 percent projection for Brazil, it trails the 4.9 percent estimate for Colombia.

74 Arrests

Mexico’s peso has beaten other Latin American currencies this year. While losing 3.6 percent against the dollar, its performance is better than the 7.7 percent decline for Brazil’s real and 8.1 percent drop for the Colombian peso. Mexico’s benchmark IPC stock index has gained 4.4 percent this year, compared with 3.3 percent for Brazil’s Ibovespa.
Former Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de Los Angeles Pineda, were captured Nov. 4 after authorities alleged they orchestrated the mass kidnapping. The town’s hall was torched last month during protests over government inaction.
Seventy-four people have been arrested in the case, including Guerreros Unidos leaders and police from Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula, Murillo said.

‘I’m Tired’

Pena Nieto or his cabinet ministers have addressed the search for the students on national television on an almost daily basis. Their comments haven’t placated the public in a nation where demonstrators march each year to remember the Tlatelolco massacre, when government troops shot and killed hundreds of students protesting anti-democratic practices on Oct. 2, 1968, days before Mexico City hosted the Olympic Games.
Protesters have made a rallying cry out of Murillo’s comment ending an hour-long news conference on the students’ deaths on Nov. 7, when he waved off additional questions by saying “enough, I’m tired.” They’ve created the Twitter hashtag “#YaMeCanse” to express indignation at the pace of the government’s investigation and call for Murillo’s resignation.
Murillo said Nov. 7 that his office will announce changes to improve Mexico’s justice system in the coming days.
Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party should work with opposition parties to, at a minimum, restructure police units and prevent criminals from running for public positions, Alonso Cervera, Credit Suisse Group AG’s chief Latin America economist, wrote in a Nov. 7 research report.
Authorities need to improve security in the poorer states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero to stop the growth of organized crime’s power in southern Mexico, Schtulmann said.
“The advances that have been made in recent years with regards to justice reform, police reform, transparency and anti-corruption have not been enough and need to go further,” Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said in a telephone interview.
“Mexican political leaders need to come up with a plan to attack the root cause of the problem while recognizing that this is going to take many, many years to fix.”