Thousands of people including relatives of 43 students presumed to have been massacred marched through Mexico City on Thursday for an emotionally charged protest marking the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
The case, one of the violence-plagued country’s worst human rights atrocities, has become emblematic of a missing persons crisis that has seen more than 100,000 people disappear.
Days before Claudia Sheinbaum takes oath as Mexico’s first woman president on October 1, relatives, students and other protesters took to the streets of the capital shouting their slogan: “Alive they took them! Alive we want them!”
Marisol Luna Torres, 33, whose brother Jose Luis was 18 when he disappeared, said she felt “sadness, pain, anger… because of not knowing anything, the wound remains open.”
The crowd headed for Mexico City’s main square in front of the presidential palace carrying mock coffins, images of the 43 students and banners reading “Punish the guilty” and “It was the state.”
A hard core of masked demonstrators vandalized buildings along the route, lighting fires, smashing windows and spray-painting walls.
The students’ disappearance on the night of September 26, 2014, drew international condemnation and shocked a nation where criminal violence has claimed more than 450,000 lives since 2006.
So far, the remains of only three of the missing students from the Ayotzinapa rural teacher training college in the southern state of Guerrero have been found and identified.
The families hold the ruling left-wing party of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — a close ally of Sheinbaum — responsible for the failure to locate the remainder.
“We believe this president lied to us. This president deceived us,” Maria Elena Guerrero, the mother of one of the missing, said at one of a series of events marking the anniversary.
Hilda Hernandez, whose son also disappeared, said the authorities are “trying to wear down the parents,” hoping they forget.
“But despite every attempt to divide and discredit, without rest or reprieve the parents continue to demand truth, justice and accountability,” she said.
– President defends record –
Lopez Obrador defended his record in a letter sent to parents this week that underscored the prosecution of 151 people — including 16 military personnel — and the imprisonment of 120 people, as well as searches of hundreds of sites.
“There is no evidence that the army participated in the disappearance of the young people,” Lopez Obrador said at a news conference Wednesday, adding that military commanders had cooperated in the investigation.
The students from the Ayotzinapa college — whose members have a history of political activism — had commandeered buses to travel to a demonstration in Mexico City when they went missing.
Investigators believe they were abducted by a drug cartel with the help of corrupt police, although exactly what happened next is unclear.
The so-called “historical truth” — an official version of the case presented in 2015 under then-president Enrique Pena Nieto — was widely discredited, notably the theory that the remains were incinerated at a garbage dump.
In 2022, a truth commission set up by Lopez Obrador’s government branded the case a “state crime” and said the military shared responsibility, either directly or through negligence.
The commission found that the army was aware of what was happening and had real-time information about the kidnapping and disappearance.
One theory it put forward was that cartel members targeted the students because they had unknowingly taken a bus with drugs hidden inside.
Amnesty International on Thursday urged Sheinbaum’s incoming government to “guarantee a professional and expeditious investigation that, once and for all, leads to justice, truth and reparation for the damage, which the families of the students so long for.”
AFP
