[hackermailman]

borderland beat covered this and it was a combination of the students stealing a cartel bus used for smuggling and the corrupt local government asking for favors of the cartels they work for to teach a lesson. Btw there is many more terrible things surfacing from mexico these days like everyday plebs having to post identifiers on their vehicles to indicate tax was paid to some cartel then rivals posting videos of killing these same plebs saying you better not get caught paying our rivals. It's just lose/lose for anyone trying to lead a normal life in certain disputed states which is growing all the time basically 19 of 32 states now.

Much insanity happening in places like Veracruz I deleted because ppl won't believe it until the see it and these idiot thugs livestream their crimes every week.

[raincom]

Found that borderland beat piece: https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/01/new-hypothesis-ayotzi...

[justin66]

> students stealing a cartel bus used for smuggling

That sounds rather irrational of them. Also, not what the NYT reported.

[MaxfordAndSons]

Yea idk, I think that version is an attempt at a (pathetic) post hoc justification for the crime (not saying it was made up by gp, but rather the cartels or their apologists). I had read that they were public municipal buses, which I guess could conceivably be used for smuggling, but would seem like an odd choice, as it doesn't seem like they would have much need to "smuggle" within the the municipality where they already operate with impunity, and driving the buses out of the territory would seem impractical/surreptitious.

[foogazi]

How I heard it reported before is students in that part of Mexico have the custom of commanding buses for free rides to nearby towns

Local cartels know and use students to smuggle drugs, weapons, people on these rides

Police and another local cartel were aware buses coming into their turf

[raincom]

Can you paste that particular borderlandbeat.com post on this?