43 students taken, 28 presumed to be dead, Guerrero, Mexico

_http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/08/mexi-o08.html said:

Burned bodies of 28 Mexican teaching students pulled from mass graves
By Don Knowland
8 October 2014

So far, 28 badly burned and dismembered bodies, believed to be those of missing student teachers, have been pulled from hidden pits on the outskirts of the City of Iguala, in Guerrero state, Mexico.

Forty-three students went missing September 26 after they were attacked by police while commandeering buses to take them to a demonstration against cuts in funding for their school The whereabouts of the remaining missing students from the Normal Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero remain unknown.
The recovered bodies had been placed on top of branches, and some had been doused with gasoline and burned, according to persons involved in searching for the students.

Guerrero state prosecutor Iñaky Blanco said that two members of the Guerrero Unidos gang confessed to killing 17 of the students and burying them. The two said that the order to pursue and detain the students came from the Iguala Director of Public Security, Francisco Vallardes, the police chief. The order to take them to an unknown location and kill them then came from the local gang leader, El Chucky.

Both Vallardes and the municipal president of Iguala, José Luis Abarca Hernández, have fled and are missing.
The governor of the Guerrero state, Ángel Aguirre Rivero confirmed that the drug gang had infiltrated the police force in Iguala, as well as other police departments in the state, and work with many local city halls.

These words had scarcely escaped the Governor Aguirre’s lips when the mother-in-law of Abarca Hernández, while conceding in an interrogation that her sons belonged to the Guerrero Unidos gang and her son-in-law protected them, charged that Aguirre’s political campaign had been funded by the drug cartel of the notorious Beltrán Leyva brothers, which has links to Guerrero Unidos. The last Beltrán Leyva brother not in prison, Hector, was only captured last week in the state of Guanajuato.

The question immediately arose, if the governor likewise was beholden to narco capos, how could anyone trust an investigation of the student massacre carried out by state prosecutors who report to him?

With outrage mounting in Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto went on national television Monday and promised a “profound investigation” to find out what happened and bring the guilty to justice.

But 11 months ago, on November 7, 2013, Abarca Hernandez’s office released a photo of him embracing Peña Nieto, while both smiled at the camera. The photo was accompanied by a press release crowing that Abarca and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, were interviewed in Iguala with Peña Nieto in order to present “social development projects” intended to grow the Iguala economy.

By that time in November, relations of Maria Pineda Villa’s family with the Beltrán Leyva cartel were already well known. In fact, her brothers, Mario Pineda Villa y Alberto “El Borrado” Mario Pineda, were executed in 2009 for betraying cartel chief Arturo Beltrán Leyva.

In October of last year, the political current known as the National Democratic Left (IDN) of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) also delivered to the federal government and the PRD testimony linking Abarca Hernández and Maria Pineda Villa with this cartel.

This included testimony from a survivor of torture and executions ordered by Abarca Hernández, himself a PRD member. Moreover, one Nicolás Mendoza specifically provided testimony, certified before a notary, relating how Abarca Hernández killed PRD leader Arturo Hernández Cardona with a shotgun blast to the chest and later had his body dumped in a pit.

Pena Nieto’s government also knew that the widow of Hernández Cardona and other kin of victims and survivors of Abarca Hernandez’s depredations made presentations in July 2013 to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
Abarca Hernández was denounced last year as well before the Mexican Attorney General, Jesús Murillo Karam, and the Secretary of the Interior, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong. But neither took any action against him.

Instead, the Mexican president cozied up to him a short while later in November. Fast forward 11 months, and Albarca Hernández’s minions in Iguala brutally massacred the Ayotzinapa students.

On Tuesday a PRD federal deputy, Silvano Blanco de Aquino, proclaimed with substantial force that narcotics trafficking had infiltrated all levels of government, including the presidency. Silvano Blanco said that “In Mexico there exists a narco-state; one has to recognize that the narcos are there from the presidency of the Republic to the municipal presidencies and give money to their election campaigns.”

Blanco noted that not all public servants are tied in with organized crime, but that it is necessary to recognize that there is not a state in the Republic where drug trafficking does not touch municipal presidents, local deputies, and federal officials, including the financing of presidential campaigns.

On Monday, families of the missing students, all of them freshmen, who made up about one third of their school's first-year class, gathered at the school in Ayotzinapa.

“These are not the first forced disappearances and executions that we have had to deal with,” said a member of the group, Javier Monroy. “We are governed by a society of drug traffickers.”

“What they do is they criminalize protest,” said one father. “They go after students, and the real delinquents are in the government."

Deeply mistrusting the government, the families said they would not accept its identification of the bodies. They have asked a renowned team of Argentine forensic investigators to conduct DNA and other tests.

A spokesman for the families, Manuel Martinez, announced plans for a nationwide march on October 8, which he vowed would “paralyze” Mexico. Other teacher, peasant, student and activist groups announced a day-long mobilization in various cities to demand justice for the 43 missing teaching students.

Adelfo Gómez Alejandro, leader of Section VII of the National Union of Educational Workers, said that 45,000 teachers in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca would march on October 8 to repudiate the “repressive attack of the Mexican government.” He called on all teachers to go into the streets and demand that the federal government and the state government in Guerrero return the missing 43 students.

Menacingly, on Monday a banner signed "Guerreros Unidos" appeared in Iguala demanding the release of the 22 police officers who were arrested a few days ago in connection with the attack on the students. It warned: "The war has started."

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MEXICO CITY -- The governor of the southern Mexico state where 43 college students disappeared after a confrontation with police said Saturday that some of the bodies recovered from clandestine graves last weekend did not match the missing young people.

The federal attorney general, however, said he felt it was too soon in testing of the remains to come to any conclusions.

In indicating that some progress had been made in identifying the dead, Guerrero state Gov. Angel Aguirre gave no details nor did he say if all of the 28 bodies removed by forensic experts had been identified. The remains were uncovered severely burned, and experts are conducting DNA tests in an effort to identify the dead.

The governor spoke at a news conference in Iguala, the city where municipal police have been accused of working with a drug gang in the disappearance of the students on Sept. 26.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam declined to confirm or dispute the governor's comments. "I do not know on what the governor based that," he said later in the Guerrero state capital, Chilpancingo. He added that experts still "have not finished testing."

Aguirre also gave no information on what authorities had found in other mass graves that were discovered in the same area as the first site on the outskirts of Iguala. That find was announced Thursday by Murillo Karam.

Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer representing families of the missing teachers college students, said he had no information about identification of any of the remains. He said it was regrettable that authorities had not first informed the families before releasing any information.

Aguirre told reporters that no more arrests had been made in the case.

On Thursday, Murillo Karam announced the arrest of four people, raising the total in custody to 34, including 26 Iguala police officers. He said the new suspects had led investigators to four new burial pits near the site where authorities unearthed 28 bodies last weekend.

The 43 students have been missing since two shooting incidents in which police gunfire killed six people and wounded at least 25 in Iguala. Prosecutors alleged that officers rounded up some students after the violence and drove off with them. Police are believed to have turned over the students to a local drug gang that apparently had ties to the family of Iguala's mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, who is a fugitive.

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_http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=384625 said:

translated to English ...

Teachers training (normalistas) and dissidents schoolteachers were protagonists this day of intense protests in the capital city of entity as a pressure measurement, so federal an local authorities speed up their search for the missing students and punish the culpables of the
massacre in Iguala, occurred in 26 and 27 of September.

The demonstrators destroyed and burnt two official buildings: the headquarters of the governmental state and the city hall of Chilpancingo, and exhibit the plain absence of authority that prevails in the state.

The demonstrators rage loosen when grenadier policemen pretend to expel a group of Ayotzinapa students that, since 11:00 hrs, took the governmental state building, located at south of the city.

For almost five hours, more than 3 thousand of bureaucrats and government officials of close circle of the Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero, between them, his Finance Secretary Jorge Salgado Leyva, and, Secretary of Public Security, Leonardo Vázquez Pérez.

Almost by 14:00 hrs, by intervention of Verapaz, a human right defense organization, the normalistas allow to went out women, elderly people and impairment people.

Two hours later, around 4 pm, the administration of Aguirre reacted and unfold a police operative by earth and air, which alerted the normalistas by the arrival of grenadiers over the north-south way in the direction of the Huacapa River.

The police movement induce normalistas to withdraw from their position that was in the perimeter of the governmental building, and to leave to where the grenadiers were getting near and to procede to clash with them with stones, sticks and molotov bombs.

The withdraw of the youth was exploit by the state authorities, which open one of the lateral access, afterwards, the bureaucrats -all males- that were being retained, were able to got out, they came out in stampede and function as "human shields" for Jorge Salgado and Leonardo Vázquez, which escape inside armored vehicles and guarded by armed bodyguards.

A reduce group of normalistas noticed the running away of the officials and lunge against the bureaucrats that protected in every moment the escape of governor's secretaries, among, the Finances Secretary, considered as the right hand of the governor.

The gross group of normalistas that were in front of the grenadiers, that in no moment they tried to expell the demonstrators and, simply they stay at a 500 meters distance from the building.

The normalistas, upon noticed that it was a dissuasive action for alllowing the escape of the bureaucrats from the closed offices, burnt a load truck from Bimbo's company to protect the retract to the building.

At that moment, a protest of the members of the CETEG (State Coordinated of the Education workers of Guerrero) who were in the Del Sol freeway stand, located in Palo Blanco town, after bursting with violence the city hall at the morning, where it was a recognition ceremony to the PRI party ex-female delegate and ex-senator Guadalupe Gómez Bermeo.

Being strengthened, the group of normalistas, students, and teachers of the CETEG lunge against the building, being already empty, provoking destroyment of widows on the front and interior of the offices.

Likewise,they set fire in an area of the structure of the Governmental building, seven interconnected sections that are classified as regions that conforms the entity.

Upon destroying the building, the normalistas and dissident teachers, took buses and went to down town center of the city, in where they lunge upon the city hall of Chilpancingo and set fire to a part of the Public Register office and other ares.

The destruction were of any kind and up to the moment hadn't being quantified, informed later the finance secretary in a set outside the building, in which promise to do a general count of the damages.

To this, the Government Secretary, Jesús Martínez Garnelo, said that even though with the actions of the normalistas, the administration of the governor Aguirre, will maintained the dialogue with the students and families.

He said also that the state government will keep looking for the 43 normalistas that still are missing.

In spite of, qualified the actions as a sign of "intolerance and unruliness" of the normalistas, and announced that the city of Chilpancingo will be guarded by grenadiers to avoid further violent actions.


The secretary of Public Security, Leonardo Vázquez, considered that the dissuasive operative to evacuate the building was the cause that trigger the rage of the normalistas, which demand the life presentation of their companions and punishment to the culpably of the massacre of Iguala.

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_http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29609409 said:

Mexico protesters set fire to offices in Guerrero
Protesters in Mexico have attacked the local government headquarters in the state of Guerrero in anger at the disappearance of 43 students

...

Demonstrators gathered outside the government complex in Chilpancingo on Monday, allowing workers to leave before ransacking and setting fire to the building and a vehicle parked outside.
They are calling for Governor Angel Aguirre to resign over the disappearance of the students and have vowed to "radicalize" their actions if there is no progress in the investigation.

...

The students all attended a local teacher training college with a history of left-wing activism but it is not clear whether they were targeted for their political beliefs.

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_http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/08/mexi-o08.html said:

So far, 28 badly burned and dismembered bodies, believed to be those of missing student teachers, have been pulled from hidden pits on the outskirts of the City of Iguala, in Guerrero state, Mexico.

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A mixture of power disputes, massacres and criminal organizations explain what is happening in Guerrero.

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Mariama said:

I don't know what you make of it, I know very little about Mexico, unfortunately.

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mabar said:

Mariama said:

I don't know what you make of it, I know very little about Mexico, unfortunately.

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I do not know what to make it either, I know very little of my country, unfortunately, too.
Had been a mistake from my part, I think is needed a little background here, that I cannot do it now, maybe at night.

But in short, Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College, known as "normal", that is why in the articles and news are called "normalistas", are rural, regional and agriculture training schools, for very, extremely poor people, usually boarding school type, with very little budget. Unfortunately they had been manipulated and used by political parties. And nowadays, not that nowadays though, such towns around the training college, are being used, manipulated by organized crime groups, narco and such.

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Mariama said:

... and see if there is anything that I can find out.

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_http://periodicoelcomienzo.blogspot.mx/ said:

Schools for poors. The rural “normales” in Mexico
Note:“normal” as ordinary, regular, “rural schools” better understanding?
“Disgrace the towns where the youth do not make tremble the world and the students remain submissive in the face of the tyrant”. ---Lucio Cabañas

The Rural Ordinary Schools where originally risen as Rural Regional Schools or as Farming Centers, they form part of the principal project of the educational reform propitiate by post revolutionary governs in Mexico, whose principle keep being the socialization of the education in the Mexican rural sphere, as propitiate the awareness and social participation for to whom conform these schools, that since their beginning adopted a defense plant of the public education as a popular right and, overall, as a right to the poor people, using education as a fundamental tool for the understanding of the social reality and, the possibility of their transformation.

Meeting the educative needs of the more marginal communities (principally the need of teachers for the elementary teaching in the more poor regions) it was prioritized the formation of rural teachers that could teach their rural children.

Since their first installation in 1922, the Ordinary Rural Schools weren't alien to the social and particularly economic conditions of every place, and for that, the program and layouts of study were adequated to the reality, assuming the compromise role and solidarity with the more needy. The only requisite to enrolled in a rural school is to not being able to have the enough resources to study in the official or state universities, in other words “be poor”. So, this schools are categorized also to form rural teachers with vocation support; a rural teacher, among other things, is an farmer, physician, and friend of the town.

The rural schools strength their politicized character stimulating their social transforming process throughout the education, adopting the socialist model proposed by Cárdenas government with the reform in the 3rd. constitutional article in 1934. This reform brought the nonconformity of the Mexican social conservative because it reexamine firmly the exclusion of religion in the education, quite rooted in rural areas; generating mistrust to the rural education project, they were treated with hostility product of religious fanaticism that disqualify the socialist teaching and, calling the rural schools as “schools of the devil”, even deriving in attacks and threats against the life of the rural teachers. (Tanalís Padilla)

Is pertinent to sign out that in the beginnings of the rural schools (we talk about 20’s and 30’s decades) many aspects of the national reality was still in reconstruction after the Mexican revolution, the intent of every in turn government was to insert to Mexico into the “modernized” projects that would allow start to develop and, for this, the character of the education that use to offer the State was a crucial aspect still to define.

The decision oscillate between the conservative politics that visualize the education as a disciplinary and social control or, a intellectual stand point that conceive the school as a propitious space for the popular conscious awake. The SEP (Public Education Secretary), in the 20’s choose the first stand, and the reflex of the porfirian (from Porfirio Diaz era _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_Díaz) social structures could be found in the study plans of some remote schools. (Susana Quintanilla)

The educative process of every country has a tight relationship with the social prevailing structures. This in fact could be done from two perspectives, this integrator that propose get into the society in the capitalist consolidation of social process and the educational precepts that are functional “through the inculcation of the dominating ideology”; or the transformer that, propose a congruent vision of the reality abandoning the role of the teacher as holder of the absolute truth to offer the tools for the awareness and the social transformation. (Eva Hicks Gómez). Retaking this planning, the structure of the Rural School in Mexico developed in a diverse manner answering basically to the integrator perspective.

The creation of the so called Houses of the Town (Casas del Pueblo) allowed to take the knowledge to the indigenous people propitiating the unity, connivance and, the collective teaching throughout the missionaries more than teachers.

The project of Cultural Missionary project was created undertaken by José Vasconcelos (_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Vasconcelos) with the purpose to alphabetize the indigenous people. However, this was one of the projects which vision was more integrated to the capitalist structure in Mexico. Well known as the Crusade against the ignorance, Vasconcelos was looking to “incorporate the indigenous people and the farmers to the project of the civilized nation, ending the religious fanaticism and the vicious habits” (Jonatan Gamboa Herrera).

There were also the schools –article 123- obligatory for the children of the workers of the agriculture and industrial companies. By the facts this schools act as formation centers of revolutionary awareness as well as agglutinative of discomfort and, against the abuse of landholders and “caciques” (chieftain).

And at last, there are the survivors of Ordinarily Rural Schools in which, besides learning the work of the farm/countryside, the students go to school to learn to fight for a different society.

This Project of rural education born, grew and, had been developing crosscurrent to the economic and social limitations generate for the incapability of the post-revolutinary governments to meet a project of suchlike wingspan, bridging to the generation of the social distrust to the social model education. On the other side, having to confront the obstacles imposed as of the abolition of the socialist education in 1944 with Avila Camacho government, period in which was given the reduction of the budget and the close of at least 30 of the 46 educational centers that were installed around the country. The last one, the Mexe in Hidalgo State, that was closed in 2008 within Felipe Calderon's government. Some of this places were transformed in junior-high schools adopting the contemporary study plans.
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Navigator said:

Situation has sparked huge amount of unrest and inconformity in the population, going above and beyond the government capabilities and now there are talks of even removing all levels of power in that particular state, people are taking over government buildings, setting them on fire, and also taking radio stations, protests in other states - big protests. This has revealed the extent of the vacuum of power in the country - an evil "pact of impunity" at all levels of gov - that has allowed the psychopaths to be completely shameless.

This is not a minority fueling the protests, large chunks of population are involved and so far this has the potential of becoming a turning point for MX.

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_http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/221339-missing-students-in-mexico-where-is-the-us said:

October 21, 2014, 07:00 am
Missing students in Mexico — Where is the US?
By Raoul Lowery Contreras,

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has come to the proverbial fork in the road. Will he shrug his shoulders and wave off 43 missing students and the two dozen bodies of young people found outside the town of Iguala in the state of Guerrero or will he turn the many resources of the Mexican government, with American help, to find out who killed them, and then arrest and punish?

For those unaware of Iguala and Guerrero, they are south of Mexico City, about 100 miles on the highway to Acapulco. The Mexicans call the land around Iguala and on to Acapulco Tierra Caliente — hot land — home to Mexican Indians, small subsistence farmers and fruit pickers, millions of native wild avocado (aguacate) trees, and vicious drug and violent gangs bent on controlling the Tierra Caliente for fun and profit.

The area is also full of javelina wild pigs, feral pigs, jaguars and tropical deer. Another 100 miles south on the highway lies the worn-out former world-famous resort of Acapulco. The highway and 50 feet on either side is the only area observed by and/or controlled by official Mexico. Everything else is controlled by the narco-trafficantes — drug cartel gangsters and local police forces on their payroll.
Last month, 43 politically active "leftist" students (male and female) hijacked a school bus to return them to their small campus. They disappeared before they arrived.

Coincidently, 46 years ago, almost to the day, protesting students were massacred in an old Spanish square in Mexico City just weeks before the 1968 Olympics opened in the city. As the Revolutionary Party (the PRI) ran the government and its security forces, no one has even been able to document exactly how many students were killed. Officially less than two dozen were killed by radical gunmen and provocateurs, but many Mexicans believe that Mexican government secret agents provoked the killings. No one will ever know how many died that day, 46 years ago in an old Spanish square in Mexico City. Is it deja vu all over again.

So far, 22 local police officers have been detained by state and federal judicial police. Judicial police investigate crimes against people. President Nieto and his attorney eneral are sending federal police into the area in force to investigate the crime and they are using a neutral Argentinian forensics team to identify the 28 bodies found in six adjacent graves.

A local drug cartel leader called "El Chucky" has been identified as the man who gave the order to kill the students, if that is what happened and can be believed of the lowly local officers in custody.

There is little doubt that the officers being interrogated are telling the truth for federal police are world famous for their interrogations. Interrogated suspects generally tell the truth after their heads are immersed in filthy unflushed toilets several times. And as there are no Miranda warnings in Mexico, suspects don't have lawyers at interrogations.

For Hollywood horror addicts, El Chucky is so named for an infamous wooden talking murderous doll called "Chucky" in a horror flick of some years ago.

The question is, will President Pena Nieto really honestly pursue the mass murderers, arrest them and send them away for the maximum Mexican prison term of 40 years?

So far, the only suspects in custody are 22 police officers. Certainly, 22 lowly officers are not what the Mexicans call the "intellectual authors" of the mass murder. Someone higher up ordered the murders, either on their own or under orders from El Chucky or his bosses in Mexico City, perhaps.

Can or will the Mexican government headed by Pena Nieto investigate and solve this mass murder?

If President Obama had any political sensitivity or good CIA intelligence from the large expensive Mexico City CIA office, he would offer the resources of the FBI to President Pena Nieto.

While at it, he could ask Pena Nieto to order the release of the former U.S. Marine, Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who has been in a Tijuana prison since May for the heinous crime of reporting to Mexican authorities that he made a mistake and drove into Mexico with three firearms that are illegal in Mexico when possessed by civilians.

Contreras formerly wrote for the New American News Service of The New York Times.

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_http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2014/03/finally-last-chapter-in-sad-case-of.html said:

Sunday, March 23, 2014
Finally, the last chapter in the sad case of Paulette
"Help me return home" - A retrospective on a death in Interlomas

Guadalajara -
Four years ago this week, all of Mexico was transfixed by the case of little Paulette Gebara Farah. Last week the nation's highest tribunal, the Supreme Judicial Court, closed the book on the matter forever.

Paulette, 4, was a child who suffered from significant developmental disabilities, both physical and emotional. She did unusual things, like crawling out of her bed in the middle of the night so she could sleep under it instead of in it. Paulette was enrolled in a school where her special needs could be addressed. She was loved by her teachers and the other students. They released balloons when it was time to say goodbye to her.

Paulette's parents were successful, well educated professionals who lived in the State of Mexico, often referred to as Edomex in Spanish. It lies just beyond the Federal District, which is contiguous with Mexico City. The capital of Edomex is Toluca.

Paulette's parents were separated and living apart. She lived with her mother, Lisette Farah, a seven year old sister and two devoted but poorly educated nannies in a comfortable, well appointed home in prosperous Interlomas. The nannies, who were sisters, had arrived in Edomex years before from their impoverished home state far to the south, hoping to make their way in life. In large measure they had succeeded.

Mauricio Gebar, Paulette's businessman father, was very much involved in his daughter's life and exercised frequent visitation. There was a history of domestic tension between Mauricio and Lisette.

On Mar. 21, 2010, when Paulette failed to appear at the breakfast table at her usual time, Lisette dispatched one of the nannies to wake her. When the nanny descended a few moments later, she delivered disturbing news: "The little señorita is not in her room. She's gone."

The house was immediately searched from stem to stern. When no trace of Paulette was found, Lisette called Mauricio. He arrived soon after and went through every room himself, with the same result. That's when they called the police.

Lisette related the core facts to the first officers on the scene. Paulette had been put to bed at her normal time the night before. Now she was gone. It was impossible for anyone else to have entered the home and taken her. The officers quickly verified that there were no signs of forced entry. Lisette told them about Paulette's sometimes odd behavior, and in the absence of anything else to go on, a tentative conclusion was reached that she must have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night and left on her own. But Paulette had never done that before.

Police and media bulletins quickly went out on the wires, and Mexicans everywhere, especially those in Edomex and the Federal District, began looking for Paulette. When she wasn't located within a few hours, everybody assumed that she must have fallen into the hands of a random kidnapper. A news hungry public devoured the story. The case became a cause célèbre overnight. Mexicans in the U.S. were equally intrigued and followed events closely.

In the days after they were first summoned, police investigators interviewed and re-interviewed Lisette, the two nannies and Mauricio, pressing all of them for the most minor details about Paulette's last few days in the house. It was their job to not discount any possible scenario which might lead to her.

Suspicion quickly fell on the nannies. Perhaps they had spirited away Paulette with a plan to later demand a ransom for her safe return. The nannies were put under the bright lights for hours on end, and were detained in a preliminary form of custody, Mexico's much dreaded averiguación previa. The nannies got a lawyer, which itself may have suggested guilt to prosecutors anxious to solve the case.

Another theory surfaced. Mauricio was convinced that Lisette had something to do with Paulette's disappearance, and he pitched it strongly to the police. Talk soon surfaced of a mother exhausted by the emotional (and financial) burdens of raising a developmentally disabled child in a single parent home. Perhaps she had lost control, struck the child and unintentionally killed Paulette. Perhaps.

Forensic experts scoured the property, especially Paulette's bedroom. They found nothing. Her bed was neatly made, and obviously hadn't been slept in. Everything was tidy and in impeccable order. A canine unit, with police dogs trained to hit on scents undetectable by humans, was led through the house. Nothing interested them in the least, investigators said.

Then the most improbable of the improbable happened. Paulette was found. She was still at home.

While Lisette and Mauricio and two terrified nannies and all of their learned counselors-at-law were busy trading charges and counter-charges, which the Mexican media excitedly broadcast in almost hourly updates, a police inspector decided to carry out yet one more search for clues at Lisette's home on Mar. 31. He went directly to Paulette's room, and focused on her bed. By then there was a slight odor in the room. Pulling back the comforter, this is what he saw.

"Let's see, what's this?" the inspector asked, as the body of Paulette revealed itself.


Paulette was tightly wedged face down in a narrow space between the foot of the mattress and the bed frame. She was quite dead.

A body recovery team was immediately dispatched to the home, and every minute of the painstaking task of examining Paulette and her bed was carefully videotaped so that the crime scene would be perfectly preserved for use in court. There was no longer any doubt about this case, police thought. Mauricio had probably been right all along. Clips of the forensic videos were on millions of Mexican television screens and computer monitors within a few days.

In March 2010 the state prosecutor of Edomex was a man named Alberto Bazbaz Sacal. He said the case was one of clear cut criminal homicide. Bazbaz was a close friend of the governor of Edomex, who later went on to another job. His name is Enrique Peña Nieto.

The Mexican public, for understandable reasons, quickly adopted the murder theory, convinced that someone with access to the home - Lisette, Mauricio or the nannies - must have killed Paulette and then neatly tucked her away in her own bed. The latter was a little hard to explain, of course, since murderers don't generally don't leave the evidence of their crime meters away. But prosecutors would tie up the loose ends when the case was presented in court, everyone thought.

The press, the police, Mauricio and prosecutor Bazbaz all targeted Lisette as the perpetrator, and the suggestion stuck with most of the public. Until everybody found out that Paulette wasn't murdered.

The most methodical postmortem examination was performed on Paulette's amazingly well preserved body a few days after it was found in her bed (a factor attributed in part to Lisette's insistence that the temperature in the home be kept very low, by the liberal use of air conditioning). The highly qualified Mexican autopsy team was assisted by a group of FBI forensic experts with impeccable credentials. Their conclusions were unanimous: Paulette had died from positional asphyxia, after crawling to the foot of the bed and covering herself up face down. She had slowly suffocated without ever waking up. The circumstances, though bizarre, were consistent with Paulette's at times extraordinary behavior.

Paulette's body revealed no sign of trauma, nor any indication that she had been physically abused, the medical team unequivocally reported.

Bazbaz retracted his claim of homicide, and sheepishly told a press conference, "I recognize that there were deficiencies in our initial investigative procedures."

Lisette, an attorney, eventually filed a civil defamation suit against Edomex officials, accusing them of a rush to judgment. It was undeniable that Bazbaz had levied his charge of murder - sparing only the name of the defendant - before physicians ever had Paulette's body on the mortuary table. Lisette claimed that her personal and professional reputations had been irreparably damaged by statements on his part which proved to be completely false.

Lisette Farah lost her case in the trial court, and lost several rounds of appeals, too. Last week she was handed a final rejection by Mexico's Supreme Judicial Court, which refused to overturn the lower tribunals' decisions. That's the end of the legal line for her.

Mexicans remain divided on little Paulette's case. Some flatly rejected the autopsy report, despite the credentials of those who prepared it. Many in this country have no confidence in police, prosecutors and the judiciary. The former governor of Edomex says he is working hard to change that. But as the fourth anniversary of a child's death in Interlomas is observed, some still ask, "What really happened to Paulette?"

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