NYT account of the night the 43 Mexican students went missing

I don't think this is "at our doorstep"

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The 43 students were undergraduates at Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, a teachers college, in Ayotzinapa, with a history of activism.

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They were among about 100 students who headed out on the evening of Sept. 26, 2014, with a plan to steal some buses. This was a tradition that students at the school had done for many years: They would take the buses, use them to transport their peers to an event and then return them when they were done.

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So they were thieves? /thread

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This is some bizarre stuff.

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My thoughts exactly.

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New Orleans is another world. Extremely fascinating, and extremely violent culture. Bautiful, passionate people, but god damn dangerous.

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FIFY

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New Orleans is another world. Extremely fascinating, and extremely violent culture. Bautiful, passionate people, but god damn dangerous.

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some of the shite that goes down in Mexico makes NOLA seem like Pleasantville, USA

So the cartels are backed by the Mexican government. Nothing new.

Go watch the movie, Sicario. Extremely accurate depiction of what kind of hell Mexico is.

There are literally scores and scores of dead bodies just on the other side of the Rio Grande. The violence and death will only continue to flood into the border cities across Texas and throughout the southwest states.

We just need to invade..wipe them all out..update the plumbing slap a fresh coat of paint on it and flip Mexico to new owner and pay some bills off..

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So they were thieves? /thread

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Not in the traditional sense of the word.

I imagine first hand context is needed to really understand this.

I had not appreciated the bus stealing antics before, but NYT certainly paints it as something more akin to a traditional activist "prank" than normal thievery. But the fact that the bus drivers have a protocol for "student hijacking" sure makes it sound like this is something locals may understand but seems really odd from the outside.

Regardless, it still seems a little weird that the article is essentially saying "oh my God the atrocities" right after it talks about how police were trying to road block against the buses and firing warning shots and the students required the drivers to keep going.

I can't imagine anything the students did could justify the disappearance of dozens of people, but that article does change my opinion a little.