Some 200 residents of the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito blocked city in protest of the disappearance of 11 people from an after-hours bar in the Zona Rosa, a nightlife and tourist district near the heart of Mexico's capital. The protests were led by the mothers of the disappeared and were broken up on Wednesday evening after about two and a half hours, when city government officials arrived on the scene to assure them that the prosecutor's office would be immediately attending to the case. One young woman who had been present at the bar - reportedly an unregistered after-hours site which operates behind a shellfish bar - on the night of the disappearances said that she had managed to escape a group of kidnappers who had "picked up" those who were now missing.
The young woman told La Jornada that the kidnappers were "a group of masked men dressed in black and carrying big weapons, who left the place in black trucks with sirens but without any official insignia" had taken them away. Other sources, including Reforma and Animal Politico, have reported that the kidnappers' vehicles did bear public security logos.
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"At first, it appeared that their goal was not to take the youths but to rob them. However, they took them in the end," an official at the prosecutor's office told AFP.
Those kidnapped - a group which includes a 16-year-old boy - hail from Tepito, a neighborhood in the center with a reputation as one of the city's toughest. Their families said that they had not been contacted by anyone seeking ransom money.
The mother of the 16-year-old, Leticia Ponce, told Noticias MVS that on Saturday night, the manager of the bar had asked the 11 kidnapped people to leave the place because "there was going to be a [police] operation". Ponce said that she had wondered where her son was on Sunday but thought that he must have gone with friends to watch the América-Cruz Azul soccer final. On Monday, when he still had not appeared and the radio she uses to communicate with him was still off, she began to worry, and alarms went off when she spoke with the mothers of her son's friends and found that they were in the same position.
Ponce said that she and the other mothers are demanding that the security videos from the bar be reviewed.
"We're despairing," she said. "I wouldn't wish what's happening on anyone."
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