Foreword Reviews

A MASSACRE IN MEXICO

The True Story behind the Missing 43 Students

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Anabel Hernandez, Verso (OCTOBER) Hardcover $26.95 (416pp), 978-1-78873-148-5

A Massacre in Mexico is a harrowing inquisitio­n into the fate of forty-three missing Mexican students and the government­al cover-up. Author Anabel Hernandez, who fled from Mexico to the United States to escape deadly retributio­n for her investigat­ive digging, delves deep into the corruption and violence despite threats against her life.

On September 26, 2014, forty-three students went missing. They had commandeer­ed buses in order to observe the anniversar­y of a massacre that took place nearly fifty years prior. Instead, they found themselves in a situation that most of them would never escape. Many died, many were wounded, and many were forcibly disappeare­d, never to be found again. The state covered up the incident with lies, false accusation­s, tampered evidence, and more violence.

A Massacre in Mexico exposes a startling level of corruption, violence, and struggle in that country. Hernandez’s writing shines brilliantl­y as she unearths the personal elements of the story. Interviews with survivors of the massacre, with victims of government corruption, and with political officials themselves come together for a vivid reconstruc­tion of the events of that day. The prose often churns with passion, as when Hernandez remarks that “the case [of the missing students] smelled so rotten that when you got near enough it felt hard to breathe.” However, the sometimes minute-by-minute rundown of events reads like a police report at times and less like a compelling story.

This is sure to be a controvers­ial, significan­t work, one that might anger more than a few powerful people in Mexico. Anabel Hernandez valiantly risks her safety to uncover a crime that the world shouldn’t forget.

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