It’s surprising that this story isn’t getting more press coverage. This report comes from Randal C. Archibold of the New York Times.

In Case of Missing Students, Hillside Mass Graves Point to a Death March

IGUALA, Mexico — The journey up — far, far up — to the mass graves here begins on a paved street in a cluttered neighborhood of this industrial city under the thumb of organized crime.

Soon the climb turns rocky, rutted and uneven, pounding the undercarriage of a regular sedan and slowing even four-wheel-drive trucks. Then it gives way to gravel and more jagged stones before jerking and jarring to an end at a narrow, forest-shrouded trail impassable for any vehicle.

Along this last, steep stretch, with overhanging vines and branches forcing a hunched walk and strenuous stepping, it becomes eerily clear that the people in these hillside graves were brought up here alive and then marched to their deaths.

That is what prosecutors believe happened to at least some of the 28 people whose bodies, badly burned and some dismembered, were found over the weekend in several pits on the hill, discovered only after witnesses in custody revealed the horrors committed here.

Swarming flies buzz in air reeking of rot. Charred wood and ash in the fetid muck testify to the burning, the macabre tableau in the mountains pointing to the societal decay down below.

The witnesses — members of a local gang that the authorities say has infiltrated the police department in this and other towns — said that 17 students from a local teachers college were apprehended by police officers, turned over to the gang, taken high up on this hill, killed and buried.

They are among 43 students reported missing after a confrontation Sept. 26 with the local police, leaving a series of pressing questions unanswered. Where are the other students? Why would the police want them killed? And if many of these bodies are not those of missing students, whose are they?