Maria Telumbre knows fire. She spends her days making tortillas over hot coals, and experience tells her a small goat takes at least four hours to cook. So she refuses to believe the government's explanation that gang thugs incinerated her son and 42 other missing college students in a giant funeral pyre in less than a day, leaving almost nothing to identify them, according to AP.
The discovery of charred teeth and bone fragments offers Telumbre no more proof of her son's death than did the many graves unearthed in Guerrero state since the students disappeared Sept. 26. She simply does not accept that the ashes belong to her 19-year-old son and his classmates.
'How is it possible that in 15 hours they burned so many boys, put them in a bag and threw them into the river?' Telumbre says. 'This is impossible. As parents, we don't believe it's them.'