11 Miners Reported Disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico

An armed group kidnapped at least 11 miners Friday in the northern town of Cocula, in state of Guerrero, where the 43 students from Ayotzinapa were disappeared and possibly murdered.

Relatives and community police confirmed the facts to La Jornada on Sunday, saying the workers were traveling in public transport from Cocula to Nuevo Balses. They worked for a mining and electricity company, as well as for the community police.

A spokesperson forthe mining company, Juan Zuñiga, declared in a press conference that over the past three years more than 100 families had fled the region, but “since the disappearance of the 43 students [from Ayotzinapa] it seemed that the situation was back to normal.”

A community police representative told him Saturday morning that between 10 and 15 miners had been kidnapped, Zuñiga explained. He emphasized that there were no conflicts between groups of civilians in the region, only with criminal groups, while he deplored the isolation of the community police, who lack human resources to be able to eradicate crime.

Meanwhile, the deployment of the federal police by President Enrique Peña Nieto in order to tackle the issue of widespread disappearances has not yet shown any results.

Before the high-profile case of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students, groups of up to 17 people in the region would regularly disappear and be found, according to La Jornada.