Mexican Bus Drivers Held Captive by Student Activists at Teachers College, Forced to Sleep in Luggage Compartment

Bus drivers in Tixtla, Mexico, say they are being held captive in Raul Isidro Burgos teachers college–the same school where 43 students went missing.

According to the Associated Press, the drivers have been forced by protesting student activists to act as chauffeurs.

Because the drivers are financially responsible for their buses, some of which are worth over a hundred thousand dollars, the men say they are stuck driving students from protest to protest. Unpaid for their work, they sleep in the luggage compartments that once held passengers' belongings and hang the clothes they have hand washed from the windshields.

The authorities, unwilling to further inflame tensions over the missing students who are presumed dead, are not coming to their rescue. And even the bus companies have so far refused to send replacement drivers so that the ones held captive might go home, the AP notes.

A bus driver, who refused to give out his name, likens the situation to that of a prison inmate who can “go out to the exercise yard or the gym, and that doesn’t mean they’re free.”

Aside from seizing the buses, the students also control toll booths in order to collect “donations” from motorists passing on the federal highway and hijack passenger buses for their own use.

While federal and state police have failed to intervene, protesters from a local teachers’ union have torched vehicles, public buildings and the offices of political parties.

The captive bus drivers were discovered by The Associated Press reporters while they were covering the story of the missing students and were compelled to talk fast before the occupying students shooed them away.

A driver warned the journalists, “If they see you talking to us, they’ll break your camera.” And a pair of students approached the reporters as they left the lot asking angrily, “Who gave you permission to be here?”

While the students have promised to pay them money when they are released, the drivers–one of whom says he has not received a proper check in a month–doubt any compensation will near the 20,000 pesos ($1,500) they are accustomed to earning monthly.