Watch: Mexican protester seizes Malala’s Nobel spotlight
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Version 0 of 1. MEXICO CITY — It seemed at first like some geopolitical non-sequitur: While the Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai was onstage in Oslo on Wednesday collecting her Nobel Peace Prize, a clean-cut young man in a gray blazer with headphones around his neck jumped in front of her and unfurled a Mexican flag as if he were cheering at the wrong soccer game. But the man, 21-year-old Adán Cortés Salas, was making his own human rights protest with his red-stained flag — about the disappearance and likely deaths of 43 Mexican teachers’ college students in September. Cortés's spotlight-stealing security breach has been enthusiastically covered in the Mexican news media. Reports have said that he is an international relations student from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the prestigious public institution in the capital, who has requested asylum in Norway. Reporters have pored over his social network photos from earlier protests and his various travels. The flag-waving is the latest example of how the popular movement provoked by the students' disappearance has spread far beyond the rolling woodlands where the crime occurred. The rallying cry for the Mexican students has been taken up by celebrities and politicians around the world. At the premiere of his new movie, "Rosewater," Mexican actor Gael García Bernal used his red-carpet interview to call the crime “one of the most incredibly hurtful things that has happened to Mexico….in its history.” Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón and other prominent Mexican directors wrote a statement saying, “We believe that these crimes are systemic and indicate a much greater evil: the blurred lines between organized crime and the high-ranking officials in the Mexican government.” President Obama said in an interview with Telemundo this week that the United States has offered forensic help to the Mexican government in getting to the bottom of the case. Obama called the disappearances an “outrageous tragedy” that has “no place in civilized society.” T-shirts, flags, banners, graffiti and popular songs have sprung up on behalf of the missing students, who were taken by police in the town of Iguala, in Guerrero state, in late September. The government has confirmed through DNA tests that charred remains found in a trash dump outside the city were those of one of the students. There have been repeated marches demanding that the government address political corruption and ties between state institutions and drug cartels. Cortés Salas's twin brother, Austin Nitzar Cortés, wrote on his Facebook page that Adán had been exonerated for his actions after an anonymous “angel” paid a fine on his behalf. He wrote that Norway’s immigration department was evaluating his brother's request for political asylum. Their mother, Monica Salas, recorded a video — which was posted on Facebook — saying that her son “looked for the opportunity to give voice to millions of Mexicans that have not been heard in this country and the only thing that I can share is to remember the message that he sent: Mexico needs you.” Yousafzai, for her part, expressed sympathy for Cortés Salas, despite the interruption of her award. His actions were a reminder, she said, that “there are problems in Mexico.” |