Cocula, Mexico -
Forensic experts combed a gully in southern Mexico on Tuesday for the remains of 43 missing students, as frustration mounted among relatives of both the disappeared and the detained for the lack of answers more than a month into the investigation.
Workers in protective gear focused on a 25-by-25 foot-square area below the ridge of the municipal dump in Cocula, a town in Guerrero state where police have been arrested and linked to the September 26 disappearances.
But they have not said so far how many bodies have been found or in what condition.
Parents of the students say they were not even notified of the latest remains, discovered on Monday based on the testimony of four new detainees in the case.
“We're angry and very tired,” said Mario Cesar Gonzalez, father of missing Cesar Manuel Gonzalez.
“We have an overwhelming sense of helplessness.”
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said on Monday that two of the detainees were members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel who handled the disappearances of the students.
The two said they received a large group of people around September 26, the date the students went missing.
The arrests on Monday put the total at 56 detainees so far in the case, yet there is still nothing concrete on the whereabouts of the students.
Journalists taken to the latest search site by authorities saw clothing but nothing resembling remains.
It appeared that some debris on the hillside had fallen from the dump above.
Workers were not digging, rather working the surface for clues.
The rural teachers college students disappeared after an attack by police in nearby Iguala.
Authorities say it was ordered by former Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and carried out by police working with the Guerreros Unidos cartel.
Parents of the missing students and their allies are staging increasingly angry protests in the state capital, Chilpancingo, blocking roads and taking public buildings.
“We aren't going to stop”, said Manuel Martinez, a spokesman for the families.
Relatives of suspects arrested in raids in the area last week are angry as well, hanging a large banner on Tuesday from the gates of the Cocula church accusing President Enrique Pena Nieto and the federal government of “a wave of arbitrary detentions of innocent citizens.”
“Authorities are desperate over how incompetent they appear in solving the case,” said Pedro Mujica.
“So they have to justify themselves by arresting innocent people.”
Mujica's cousin, Gustavo Moreno Arroyo, was detained along with several other men in Iguala on October 21, and accused of drug trafficking and weapons possession.
Relatives say the stocky 29-year-old farmer and soccer coach never even owned a gun.
“My son told me he had been beaten and tortured and forced to confess to something that wasn't true,” said his mother, Irma Arroyo Moreno. - Sapa-AP