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Since 2006 over 22,000 people have gone missing in Mexico. On September 26th, 43 young men were added to that list. This week, almost two months since the 43 went missing, authorities finally arrested Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife Maria de Los Angeles Pineda for their alleged role in the disappearances. Authorities believe that the Mayor ordered the police to attack the students because they had plans to disrupt Pineda’s speech.

After the police shot and killed 6 students, witnesses say they handed the remaining students over to the Guerreros Unidos gang. Since Abarca’s arrest, federal officials discovered that the Guerreros Unidos were routinely paying off the Mayor at the rate of $220,000 every few weeks.

The investigation into the students’ disappearance has led to the unearthing of 38 bodies buried in dozens of mass graves. Although government officials used DNA tests to determine that the bodies were not those of the 43 students, parents of the missing men question those claims.

With thousands of people killed at the hands of the drug cartels each year, the Mexican public seems to have reached a tipping point with this incident. A big part of the frustration stems from what the public sees as total impunity from police and government officials. This week over 100,000 people marched through the streets of Mexico City to demand justice for the missing students as well as an end to the corruption at the highest levels of Mexican society.

GUEST: Laura Carlsen is the Director of the Mexico City-based Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, and host of a program on Telesur English

Click here to read Laura Carlsen’s latest article about this story.