Mexico City Artist Marks Day Of The Dead With Altar To Missing Students

BuzzFeed - Artists use the holiday to highlight national ills. John Stanton reports from Mexico City for BuzzFeed News. A Mexican artist erected a massive Dia De Los Muertos altar in the city's central Zocalo square on Saturday dedicated to 43 missing college students from the state of Guerrero. The students disappeared more than a month ago. Authorities say local officials and corrupt police are to blame. John Stanton / Via Buzzfeed Although Dia De Los Muertos altars are typically erected to family members or friends, Mexican artists have long used the tradition to highlight social and political causes. John Stanton / Via BuzzFeed Artist Octavio Marquez Orozco originally conceived of the two statues — which depict a bound man with a black hood on his head and a mourning mother — as a symbol of the epidemic of disappearances in the country, the outrage over the missing college students prompted him to add a dedication to them. The altar is "to support the disappeared, and [is]