Powerful Photos Capture the Student Protests Barely Anyone Is Talking About

*The protests in Hong Kong have dominated U.S. media, but this is happening in our backyard. VL

By Coleen , World.Mic

While the world has focused its attention on the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, there’s another student movement gaining steam on the other side of the world.

The unfolding protests gripping Mexico began in the small town of Iguala, in the southwest region of Guerrero state, where the disappearance of 43 student teachers on the night of Sept. 26 has sparked outrage amid allegations of collaboration between local police and organized crime.

“Iguala is just one example of the level of decay in state and municipal security institutions,” Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., told the Washington Post.

Witnesses belong to a local gang, which federal authorities claim has infiltrated the local police department. The police apprehended 17 students from a local teachers college, according to the gang. They were then escorted through a rugged hill, killed and buried.

The 17 students are among the 43 who disappeared in late September.

More than 22,000 people have gone missing in Mexico in the last eight years, according to a list of names the Mexican government holds. Local police claimed that 28 corpses recently exhumed from a mass grave did not belong to any of the missing victims from Iguala’s teacher’s college.

Despite this horrific incident, the outcry in Mexico has been largely overshadowed by Hong Kong, according to Google Trends:

Clock HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by kinoluiggi/Flickr]

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