Twenty injured in clashes between ‘normalistas’ and National Guard in Mexico

MADRID, Feb. 6 (Royals Blue) –

At least twenty students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School have been injured in clashes with the National Guard during a protest in which they have cut a toll on the Autopista del Sol to demand the appearance of the 43 students from the center who disappeared in Iguala in 2014.

The normalistas have marched peacefully this Saturday and held an act in the anti-monument to the 43 disappeared, where they denounced that during the confrontation that occurred on Friday at the Palo Blanco toll booth with the National Guard and the State Police, 20 of their companions were injured. and three of them are hospitalized, one of them with a serious prognosis after receiving a blow to the head.

The state government has reported 22 injuries, including 14 National Guard officers and 8 state police officers, as well as material damage. The ‘normalistas’ rammed a trailer against a tourist information module that was near the toll booth in their confrontation with the security forces.

Leaders of the Normal of Ayotzinapa have assured that the brawl originated when the National Guard began the aggression. “We only responded with what we had at hand,” a spokesman argued.

In addition, the students have urged the security forces to, instead of guarding booths, fight the crime that has terrified the citizens of many regions of Guerrero. “It is useless to have many security forces if they only serve to repress the people, the social organizations, and the students,” they have reproached.

“We are not vandals, if we protest it is because we want the government to comply by handing over our 43 disappeared companions in Iguala,” he stressed.

The 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Normal School, in the state of Guerrero, disappeared in the early hours of September 27, 2014 in the neighboring municipality of Iguala during a protest against local authorities.

The first official version was that they were surprised by the criminal organization Los Rojos, as part of a settling of accounts between rival groups, and that the assassins killed and incinerated them and disposed of their remains in the Cocula dump, facts later refuted by a new investigation.

The Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa case revealed in October of last year that the Mexican Army had information on this case since 2014, as reported by the families of the victims, and that it was not delivered despite having a presidential decree of 2018 that forced it.