Mexico City is in turmoil. Rioters are flooding the streets and the government pushes back, sometimes using lethal force to subdue the people. The population grows more dissident with every day that passes, and they have quite the list of reasons to be this way. The people are no longer complacent. They want justice. They want a revolution.

Mexico has been dealing with civil unrest for quite some time now, but recently it reached the tipping point, with hundreds to thousands of protesters turning up to speak out against their corrupt government and demand that President Enrique Pena Nieto step down from office.

There have been many events leading up to these clashes. The biggest one to be noted is the disappearance of 43 students on Sept. 26. There was a clash with police, in which six people were killed, and 43 students just disappeared off of the face of the Earth. Now, people suspect that the government kidnapped them and turned them over to a drug cartel known as Guerreros Unidos. There was a mass grave discovered outside of Iguala, a city about 200km south of Mexico City which is suspected to hold the students. DNA tests are being performed, but none have been identified as students so far. The bodies have been burnt beyond recognition, and Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam stated that only two bones were salvageable for DNA tests. Other bodies were dumped in a river. It has been stated and is widely believed that these students were targeted because they were attending a teacher-training college named Ayotzinapa, which is known for more liberal views.

Also, there are claims of government infiltrators among the protesters. This is because, at least back at the beginning, people planned to have peaceful protests against the standings of the government, but somehow it would keep erupting into violence. Later, people started to notice one person consistently showing up to protests and starting to get violent. Finally, someone caught him starting violence and then running to hide behind the police, who then protected him. He was then branded as a traitor and people began watching out for him as well as others who would try to turn a protest into a bloodbath.

It has also come to light that a subsidiary of Grupo Higa owned an expensive luxury house that President Pena Nieto’s wife, Angelica Rivera, was trying to acquire, which raised many questions about the tender involved. She announced on Nov. 18 that she would be giving up the house.

The government has become so corrupt that they have many connections to drug gangs and cartels, basically bringing them to the point where they can put out a hit on a person and see it carried out without a hitch. And surprisingly, this has not really hit news outlets enough for people to know about it. I have asked several people if they had heard about the riots and uprising in Mexico, and none of them had.

Remember, literally thousands of people marched in Mexico City just around a week ago. They even set fire to the door on the Presidential Palace! For something this serious, you’d think more people would have heard of it.

Supposedly, the U.S. government also refuses to comment on or acknowledge the current state of affairs in Mexico. If this is the case, I’m truly saddened. We are still fighting an ongoing war overseas and now we’re starting to “protect our interests” in Eastern Europe as Russia begins to make movements towards the west, yet we do nothing to help our neighbor? I know these are complicated issues, but one big issue people have in the U.S. is the level of illegal immigration from Mexico.

We need to realize this is happening due to the terrible state of affairs in that country. What if we tried to step in and help? There’s no way to know for sure how it would work, but I think if we could do something about it, we should.

-Cameron MacDonald