Demonstrators gathered in Mexico City on Saturday, wearing red and carrying symbolic coffins, to demand answers regarding the 43 teacher trainees who vanished 12 years ago.
President Claudia Sheinbaum is anticipated to present a report on Monday detailing recent developments in the investigation, following an exhaustive evidence review conducted by the attorney general’s office.
“Because they were taken alive, we want them back alive,” read one banner held by protesters.
The demonstration was organized by the parents of the 43 teacher trainees from Ayotzinapa, leading a procession to the capital’s main square where the government palace stands.
Participants counted to 43 repeatedly to honor each of the trainees from the rural teachers’ college who disappeared on September 26, 2014.
“Another year of strain, of exhaustion, of hopelessness,” stated Estanislao Mendoza, father of one of the missing trainees, to AFP. “We want to know, whether it’s good or bad, alive or dead, but to know the truth, to know where they are. Twelve years of suffering, of lies.”
The students were en route from Guerrero state to a protest in Mexico City when local police stopped them in Iguala. In the ensuing hours, six individuals died in a violent confrontation and the remaining 43 trainees were taken and never seen again.
Initial prosecutor statements claimed police delivered the 43 teacher trainees to drug cartels who murdered them, burned their bodies, and disposed of remains in a nearby river. However, independent human rights experts have disputed these conclusions, leaving the unresolved case as a persistent blemish on Mexico’s international reputation.
In August, a former governor was arrested accused of deleting security footage from the Iguala crime scene. The former state attorney general was previously detained in 2022.
Currently, over 134,000 individuals are listed as disappeared in Mexico.
“It is necessary to support a struggle against the indifference of a government that refuses to accept that there is a disappearance crisis,” said 69-year-old Atanacio Pina, whose missing son was later found deceased.
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