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Episode details

World Service,25 Nov 2014,23 mins

Who Runs Mexico?

The Inquiry

Available for over a year

Mexico is gripped with the story of 43 student protesters who vanished in September. They were allegedly killed on the orders of a mayor who wanted to prevent them from attending a rally where his wife was due to speak. The mayor and his wife have been arrested but no case has been proven against them in court. The story has fuelled nationwide demonstrations about the relationship between government and organised crime. The government says it is taking the problem seriously and points to falling murder rates and the arrest of a number of drug barons in recent years, as evidence that Mexico is winning the war against the cartels. Guests include an investigative journalist who has had run-ins with the cartels, a former Mexican intelligence analyst who says he is obsessed with stopping the violence and a prominent public intellectual with a long view of the patterns of power in Mexico.

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