are marches and other civic actions, most of them peaceful. On Wednesday, students from Instituto Politécnico Nacional, a large university in Mexico City, took control of toll booths on the highways leading into the city and allowed traffic to pass without paying. In Guerrero, protestors continue to burn government buildings. There will be a march in Mexico City on October 31st, coinciding with the Day of the Dead holidays, and a “mega march” is scheduled for November 5th, the day that Mexico’s universities and colleges are planning a national strike.

Many in Mexico have wondered why the missing forty-three have inspired such outrage in a country that has long since grown anesthetized to mass violence. This past June, twenty-two young people were massacred in a Mexico State warehouse bysoldiers who claimed they’d been engaged in a long gun battle. The victims included a seventeen-year-old girl who was shot in the head. Her mother, when she recovered the body, said a soldier’s boot imprint was still visible on her daughter’s face. The case would have been covered up had it not been for human-rights groups and some early Associated Press wire-service reports bringing it to light. Even then, the Attorney General’s office didn’t agree to investigate the case until three more months had passed. Two weeks ago, in the city of Reynosa, a young physician and mother named María del Rosario Fuentes Rubio was kidnapped. She had been writing for the site Valor por Tamaulipas (where people post information and warnings about local narco activities) as an