Crime

Mexico Claims Film Students Were Dissolved in Acid. Activists Want Proof

On Sunday night, the rapper QBA was due to headline a rap festival in Tijuana, northern Mexico. Instead he is behind bars in the western city of Guadalajara, accused of dissolving the dead bodies of three film students in sulfuric acid. 

The shocking crime has offered a powerful reminder that young people bear the brunt of the violence plaguing the country and have become so disillusioned with their own government that they feel unable to take its word.

Film students Javier Salomon Aceves, 25, Daniel Diaz, and Marco Avalos, both 20, were abducted on March 19. According to authorities, armed men dressed as police officers seized the trio as they were returning by car from filming for a project in a house located in a suburb of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco.

Authorities said the Jalisco New Generation Cartel—Mexico’s deadliest criminal organization—was behind the killings.