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Many will remember journalist Daniel Hernandez' work in Los Angeles, as a reporter at the LA Times, then at the LA Weekly. He also worked for awhile for the Times' bureau in Mexico City. These days Hernandez is the bureau chief in Mexico City for Vice, which puts him right in the midst of covering the narco terrorism afflicting the country and, more recently, the tragedy off the 43 students who were disappeared while headed to a protest in Iguala in the state of Guerrero. Today he posted the first part of a Vice video series on the missing students and the building fire in Mexico over official corruption and the vicious drug cartels. Of the 43 students, who many now believe were murdered after being turned over to the Guerreros Unidos cartel by police at the behest of the mayor, Hernandez says: "This case has stunned Mexico to new levels of outrage and anger." You know — who can say with confidence that Hernandez — and Tracy Wilkinson, Randy Archibold and the others on station in Mexico — are not right now covering the biggest story of their lives.
Hernandez posted a story yesterday, Mass Graves Dot Hillsides Around Iguala as Search for Missing Students Continues
Tonight's video story:
Tracy Wikinson's lede tonight in the Los Angeles Times:
Seizing on the anniversary of Mexico’s 1910 revolution, demonstrators took to the streets in Mexico City and other parts of the country Thursday in one of the largest shows to date of public anger over government corruption and the probable massacre of 43 college students.
Youths, parents, teachers, intellectuals, entire families and thousands of people from many walks of life converged from three directions on the capital's enormous Zocalo, or central downtown plaza.Many held candles aloft despite the chilling rain and waved pictures of the missing students, all from a rural college in the town of Ayotzinapa, in Guerrero state, dedicated to training the poor to become teachers -- itself a product of the revolution that Thursday’s anniversary marked. They were last seen in the Guerrero city of Iguala on Sept. 26 being led away by police, who authorities say handed them over to drug gang members who killed them, incinerated their bodies and dumped the remains in a river.
Randal C. Archibold, a former Los Angeles reporter, in tomorrow's New York Times:
A day of mostly peaceful antigovernment mass marches on Thursday to protest the disappearance, and presumed murders, of 43 college students ended with clashes with the police who tried to prevent some demonstrators from damaging the National Palace in the city center.
Thousands of people led by relatives of the missing students marched through the city and converged at night at the historic square known as the Zócalo, many of them pleading with masked young people to refrain from violence or stay out of the march.Demonstrators, mostly students and members of teachers’ unions joined by celebrities, artists and others, focused their ire on President Enrique Peña Nieto, with echoing shouts of “Peña Nieto out!” and an effigy of the president that was burned.
Previously on LA Observed:
Criticizing the 'embedded in MacArthur Park' project
Why he roots for Mexico
'De-coloring' of the Los Angeles Times
Free the bacon-wrapped hot dog
