Minnesota is next stop in quest for justice for missing students

In the gym of Ascension Catholic Church in north Minneapolis on Sunday, a dozen members of the church's Justice in Action group sat down to talk with a half-dozen local mobilizers of the Caravana Ayotzinapa 43 Minnesota.

There were plans to make, and grief to share.

Four family members of the 43 college students who were abducted and presumably killed last September in Mexico's Guerrero state will arrive in the Twin Cities on Saturday. The four are among 12 family members who are driving across the country to educate and, perhaps, to provoke some action by residents here and government officials in Mexico.

Events are planned Sunday at Ascension Church and Monday at Macalester College and McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul. A protest is scheduled Monday at the Mexican Consulate on St. Paul's East Side.

Organizers Francisco Chavez, Fernando Sanchez and Jorge Gomez have each lived in Minnesota for almost 20 years. They hope to help Caravana Ayotzinapa meet its goals, including lobbying the Mexican consul to take responsibility and publicly declare that the abduction and killing of the 43 students was a criminal action by the government.

They also want local and federal politicians to renounce the spreading violence in Mexico. They want Mexico's president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to acknowledge the use of torture by the armed forces and publicly declare the abduction "a forced disappearance."

The 43 students attended a rural teacher-training college and were traveling in a convoy of buses and vans from the rural town of Ayotzinapa to a protest of government policies.

Authorities have told the families that the students were turned over to a drug cartel and were murdered and their bodies burned. But many believe that some of the students may still be alive.

The Caravana Ayotzinapa wants justice for the students and calls their disappearance "a state crime against humanity." The group's news releases and signs say "They tried to bury us but they didn't know we were seed."

The Spanish flew fast and at times furious around the table in the Ascension gym Sunday. Some had been personally touched by the violence.

One woman said her brother was killed by police in the city of Puebla in 2002. Another said she'd been told that finding bodies stuffed into garbage bags along the roadside was "normal."

A survey by Amnesty International found that torture by police and the armed forces has increased by 600 percent since 2003 and that 64 percent of Mexicans fear torture if they are taken into custody by police, organizers said.

A presentation at 1 p.m. Sunday and a political and cultural program at 3 p.m. at Ascension Church, 1723 Bryant Av. N., Minneapolis.

A presentation at noon Monday in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall at Macalester College, 1600 Grand Av., St. Paul, and a 1:15 p.m. presentation at the McNally Smith Auditorium, 19 E. Exchange St.

A protest at 3 p.m. Monday at the Mexican Consulate, 797 E. 7th St., St. Paul.