MEXICO CITY (CN) — Thousands marched Thursday in Mexico City with the parents of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa Raúl Isidro Burgos rural teachers college who were forcibly disappeared 10 years ago to demand justice and accountability.
Years of independent and government reports show that the students were intercepted by the Mexican military, state police and drug smuggling gangs on the night of Sept. 26, 2014, as the students traveled on five busses towards Mexico City to commemorate the October 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre.
“It’s been 10 years since they took our sons, and we still don’t know where they are. But we do know it was the Army who took them,” said Macedonia Torres of the Ayotzinapa college at a rally Wednesday on Reforma Avenue in Mexico City.
“Why don’t they invest in education, in infrastructure, instead of sending the military to our towns,” said another student at the rally.
To this day, there have been no prosecutions in the case that has been considered the worst atrocity in modern Mexican history and only three students’ remains have been identified.
“I am here. I am able to march. If there is no mobilization like this, the government won’t ever do anything. We can at least hope to find answers if we mobilize and demand accountability for the case. It is painful, but we can’t just let it go,” said Xavier Vellasquillo while marching Thursday in support of the organization Disappeared People of Mexico City.
“My son, Luis Ángel López, was also disappeared on this date seven years ago in [the south of Mexico City] so I come to this march every year,” said Rosa Isela. “It is a very heavy day for me and for everyone missing their family members.”
In the months following the disappearance, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam — appointed by then-president Enrique Peña Nieto — created a narrative blaming local Guerrero police and the Guerreros Unidos cartel for the massacre.
As the story went, students at the college, known for its leftist political activities and philosophy, were on their way to disrupt a political event being held by the mayor of Iguala. The spun “historic truth,” as it was called by Murillo Karam, says that the mayor called the local police to intercept the students, who were then handed to a cartel that incinerated the students at a trash dump near the town of Cocula.
With help from the Attorney General’s Criminal Investigation Agency, this was the explanation the government gave to the public in the months following the massacre.
However, three reports made by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts — a group created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — contradict the government’s narrative and point to the Mexican military for their role in fabricating evidence at the so-called crime scene pushed by the Mexican government.
An Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts report from Feb. 2022 revealed drone footage a month after the Iguala attacks showing the Mexican Navy and Murillo Karam at the site of the Cocula trash dump where the students were said to have been incinerated, manipulating the scene for hours.
That same day, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, an independent forensics team investigating the crime, arrived at the Cocula site but only after their plane was diverted by the Attorney General’s Office.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts made a fourth report further implicating the Mexican Armed Forces in the disappearance connected with the heroin trafficking group, Guerrero Unidos, including messages between the criminal group and Mexican soldiers.
In an August 2022 press conference, Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s former undersecretary for human rights and president of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case — a body created by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — called the disappearance that night “a state crime,” and on Sept. 27, 2023, stated that “officials of the highest level are responsible for the ‘historical truth.'”
Encinas resigned on Oct. 19, 2023 after he realized he had been under military surveillance through Pegasus software.
By 2023, the four independent investigators who comprised the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts had resigned, citing government interference and espionage for the impossibility of continuing their work.
Another protester from Iguala blamed the military Thursday.
“The Mexican military infiltrated the Ayotzinapa school. This shows us that the Mexican government could have had the intention of some kind of counter-insurgency. Also, we know that the military coordinated with the local police sending security camera footage. With this, we know the military is involved,” said Isaac Hernandez during the march.
“We also know that one military member was reporting in real time what was happening as the night unfolded. AMLO’s government has failed us completely, he never gave us a solution and he defends the military at all costs. The most we can do is continue to demand answers when Sheinbaum is president,” he said. President López Obrador is commonly known by his initials, AMLO.
The independent experts’ third report detailed that the Ayotzinapa students had been under surveillance the night of their disappearance and had already been monitored as a national security concern by the Federal Police, State Police and National Intelligence Center.
“There are major duel issues illustrated by this case. One is macro-criminality. This is the collusion and involvement of state actors throughout all levels of institutions which are involved not just in the crime itself, but the coverup,” said Claire Dorfman, assistant director of the Mexico Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, during a phone interview. “The second is macro-impunity. This means that there are no repercussions, justice may never come. Impunity is being rewarded by impunity.”
The parents of the missing students have ended communication with the president, who according to a recent report, lied about the soldier who infiltrated the college who was also disappeared that night.
A recent internal Secretary of Defense document dating back to October 2014 disclosed that Julio César López Patolzin was cleared by the military to carry out intelligence reports on the rural student college to the Army, contradicting López Obrador’s statements to the victims’ families.
“The soldier … did not have training in military intelligence, much less was he an infiltrator,” López Obrador reportedly told the parents of the 43 students at a meeting concerning the case on July 8.
During Wednesday’s morning press conference, López Obrador released a letter to the parents of the 43 missing students, further denying any military involvement.
“It is important to clarify that even when there is no evidence that the military participated in the disappearance of young people, we have still investigated the military members who would have committed the crimes linked to organized crime,” he said.
In Thursday’s press conference, just days before his term ends, López Obrador said that President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum will continue the investigation into the incident.
“The criminality within the state is so large that it allows something like Ayotzinapa to occur,” Dorfman said.
There have been arrests made, most notably of Murillo Karam, who is accused of torture, forced disappearance and obstruction of justice. Eight soldiers have also been arrested for their culpability in the crime but were released from the preventive prison and put on house arrest. No one has been convicted in the case.