MEXICO CITY — The grief-numbed parents of Hermosillo buried their babies and waited for answers.
When none came, they marched. When they got desperate, they traveled the thousand miles to Mexico City and marched some more. They carried banners with photos of their children -- 48 in all -- killed when fire tore through a crowded day-care center named ABC.
More than a month after the June 5 blaze in the northern state of Sonora, satisfying answers are in short supply. Instead, the incident and its aftermath reveal much about what is wrong with Mexico.
Impunity. Corruption. Lack of transparency. Aloof politicians who are most nimble when ducking blame. Bureaucracies that bury you in red tape.
Residents avoid reporting crimes because they mistrust the police or have little faith that anyone will be punished. A federal justice official this week said that only 3% of criminal cases reach sentencing.
Many Mexicans view voting as largely useless -- one reason why many opted to deface their ballots in Sunday's elections in protest.
None of the ABC center's owners, including a relative of the first lady, are anywhere to be found. No top boss from the federal agency overseeing the center has quit or been sacked. No local official has been punished for approving a safety inspection weeks earlier, even though emergency exits were later found to have been blocked, unmarked or sealed shut.
Instead, federal and state authorities traded accusations that provided bitter grist for the final stretch of the campaign for Sonora governor.
It took federal authorities weeks to make good on their promise to release the names of those who run the 1,500 day-care centers nationwide that are under contract to the Mexican Social Security Institute, a sprawling federal agency that also oversees hospitals and health clinics. But when the list was finally made public during a Senate hearing Wednesday, it seemed to only confirm everyone's worst suspicions: Sprinkled throughout were the names of dozens of politically connected Mexicans.
The registered owner of one day-care center, Happy Child, was identified in news reports Friday as the daughter of an alleged Sinaloa drug kingpin.
The apparent cronyism touched all three major political parties, including that of President Felipe Calderon, who has made law and order a centerpiece of his administration. It also encompassed the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which won Sunday's midterm congressional elections on promises of a "new attitude."
