WASHINGTON, December 4 (Sputnik) — US activists are holding protests across the country against the United States funding Mexican military forces under the cover of a drug war.
"The first and foremost [goal of protests] is to call for and bring an end to what is known as Plan Mexico, a multibillion dollar aid package that is providing guns that are [leading to] disappearing students, the heavy weaponry that is killing tens of thousands of Mexicans," protest organizer Roberto Lovato told Sputnik Wednesday.
"There are 43 cities [taking part in the protest action], each city will tell a story of one of the 43 disappeared students. We will literally and metaphorically be lighting a candle into the darkness of the transactions between the Obama administration and the Peña Nieto administration to bring out this really sinister policy," Lovato explained, adding that "tens of thousands" of people are expected to show up.
The organizer stressed that the US media is presenting Mexican student abduction and disappearance as a local issue and a soap opera dramatizing and sensationalizing it, diverting attention from what Mexicans protesting in the streets are saying.
"There are millions of people marching and mobilizing and they have human signs that say "fue el estado" [meaning] "it was the state", it was the federal government. The US news…appear to be protecting the US government from having its dirty hands exposed to the public light," Lovato told Sputnik.
The protesters are calling on US funds to be "immediately withdrawn from that [Mexican] government, from those military forces that are basically killing their own people under the cover of drug war".
"We are going to stop the aid and we are going to stop US intervention in Mexico," Lovato stressed.
On September 26, a group of policemen abducted several Mexican college students protesting against discriminatory hiring and funding practices in the city of Iguala. Six people died in the initial conflict and 43 students are still missing.
Plan Mexico was created under the George W. Bush administration in 2007, authorizing the United States to give millions of dollars to Mexico to support the security forces in fighting drug trafficking and ending violence in the Latin American country.
