Thousands marched through Mexico City on Thursday, including relatives of 43 students presumed massacred, in a poignant protest marking the 10th anniversary of this tragedy. The case remains one of the country’s worst human rights violations and highlights a broader crisis of missing persons, with over 100,000 people unaccounted for in Mexico.
Just days before Claudia Sheinbaum is set to be inaugurated as Mexico’s first female president on October 1, protesters filled the streets, chanting their slogan: “Alive they took them! Alive we want them!”
Marisol Luna Torres, 33, whose brother Jose Luis disappeared at 18, expressed her deep emotions: “Sadness, pain, anger… the wound remains open.” The crowd moved toward Mexico City’s main square, carrying mock coffins, images of the students, and banners that read “Punish the guilty” and “It was the state.”
Some masked demonstrators vandalized buildings along the route, breaking windows and setting fires. The students disappeared on September 26, 2014, an event that drew international condemnation and horrified a nation grappling with rampant criminal violence that has claimed over 450,000 lives since 2006.
To date, only three of the missing students from the Ayotzinapa rural teacher training college in Guerrero have been found and identified. Families blame the ruling left-wing party of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an ally of Sheinbaum, for failing to locate the others. “We believe this president lied to us,” said Maria Elena Guerrero, mother of one of the missing.
Hilda Hernandez, another mother of a missing student, accused authorities of trying to wear down the families. “But despite every attempt to divide and discredit us, we continue to demand truth, justice, and accountability,” she said.
In a letter to the families, Lopez Obrador defended his administration’s efforts, citing the prosecution of 151 individuals, including 16 military personnel, and emphasizing cooperation from military commanders in the investigation. He stated, “There is no evidence that the army participated in the disappearance.”
The Ayotzinapa students, known for their political activism, had taken buses to attend a demonstration in Mexico City when they were abducted. Investigators suspect they were taken by a drug cartel with the aid of corrupt police, but the exact details remain murky. The official narrative presented in 2015 was widely discredited, particularly the claim that the students’ remains were incinerated at a garbage dump.
In 2022, a truth commission established by Lopez Obrador’s government labeled the case a “state crime,” indicating military complicity, either directly or through negligence. The commission suggested that the army had real-time information about the abduction and may have known about the cartel’s intentions, positing that the students were targeted after unknowingly taking a bus containing hidden drugs.
On Thursday, Amnesty International urged Sheinbaum’s incoming government to ensure a thorough investigation that leads to justice and reparations for the families who have waited too long for answers.
