María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa

María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa is the former first lady of Iguala, a city in the Mexican state of Guerrero. In October 2014, the Attorney General of Mexico, Jesús Murillo Karam, accused her and her husband, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, of being the "probable masterminds" behind the September 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping and disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College. Pineda Villa and her husband fled hours after the reported abductions and were arrested by federal authorities on November 4, 2014. In November 2014, the prosecution's investigation indicated that Mayor Abarca ordered local police to stop the students from protesting a political event and speech Pineda Villa was scheduled to hold. The police allegedly attacked the students' buses when they entered Iguala and then delivered them to members of the local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos. She has four brothers: Julio Guadalupe, Mario Antonio, Salomón and Alberto.

Ties to organized crime Since 2002, Salomón, or "El Malón" and his brothers, Mario "El MP" and Alberto "El Borrado", had been operating as independent drug traffickers in Guerrero and Morelos. The Pinedas trafficked primarily cocaine, coming from Colombia and Venezuela to Guerrero. In March 2009, the attorney general's office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) named Pineda Villa's brothers Alberto and Mario Antonio in their list of the most wanted drug traffickers. In September 2009, Alberto and Mario were murdered for their betrayal of kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva. In December 2009, Arturo Beltrán Leyva was killed during a shootout with Mexican Marines in Cuernavaca, Morelos. This included the Guerreros Unidos, led by Salomón "El Malón" Pineda Villa, in the states of Guerrero and Morelos. in June 2012, Abarca won the election and became Mayor of Iguala despite having no previous political experience. Abarca and Guerrero's Governor, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, were members of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in opposition to President Enrique Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Hernández's wife, Iguala city councilwoman Sofía Mendoza, gave a statement to state authorities, but they failed to investigate the allegations. That night, municipal police in Iguala confronted the students and opened fire against them. Three students and three by-standers were killed and 43 students were forcibly disappeared. of the missing students and identified her as the leader of the local police and the gang's highest-ranking member in government. In January 2015 she was charged with federal crimes of organized crime and conducting operations with illicit funds.