(21 Dec 2015) The new mayor of the city of Iguala in the southern state of Guerrero in Mexico said he has plans to "turn the page" on the ugliest chapter his city has seen in the last year.
Mayor Esteban Albarran Mendoza, 47, who was elected in September, told the press in early December that it was time to change the security measures of his city and to propose a better system of politics.
Fifteen months ago when 43 college students disappeared at the hands of local police and cartel thugs, Iguala became the symbol of Mexico's narco-brutality. Now, federal police is in charge of security, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party controls its City Hall and Albarran said it's time to move forward.
Albarran faces the challenge of the growing number of disappearances along with continued bloodshed, as the drug trade goes on.
Despite the presence of federal and state police, and the military, there is no sign that trafficking has subsided around Iguala or elsewhere in the state of Guerrero, a main producer of marijuana and opium paste for the US heroin market.
Again this month, state and federal officials promised to secure Guerrero and eradicate more poppy fields, recognizing that efforts of the past year had little impact.
Former Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez was arrested and charged with murder in connection to the disappearance of the 43 students, and 66 police officers from Iguala and neighboring city of Cocula have been jailed.
Authorities have disbanded the local police force that allegedly turned the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which officials say was closely allied with Abarca.
From January to October, murders in Iguala were up by 25 percent from the same period the previous year, with 81 deaths among a population of 150,000.
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