British Broadcasting CorporationLuz Maria Telumbre braved pouring rain to travel from the western state of Guerrero to Mexico City to mark the 10th anniversary of the darkest night of her life.
Her son, Cristian Alfonso, would have been approaching his 30th birthday.
Instead, she held a photo of him, frozen in time—he was just 19 when he and his classmates were kidnapped by Mexican police.
Christian was one of 43 trainee teachers who traveled to Mexico City from the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College, which has a long history of activism, to participate in the annual protests.
The students, who disappeared from the city of Iguala, were last seen on surveillance footage lying face down in the back of a police pickup truck as they were being spirited out of the city.
The full story of the Guerrero state’s shady relationship with the cartels – and its role in the student abductions – has never been fully determined.
In the years since, parents of Luz Maria and other victims have been calling for the same thing. “They took them alive, we want them back alive,” they chanted.
Essentially, this is a call for authorities to clarify what happened to their children on the night of September 26, 2014, admit full guilt and prosecute those involved.
A preliminary investigation under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto concluded that corrupt municipal police in Iguala and surrounding towns turned over the students to the Guerreros on orders from the local mayor. Unidos drug cartel.
According to the investigation, the cartel killed the students and disposed of their remains, while federal police and the army were believed to have had no involvement.
However, this version of “historical truth” has been met with widespread skepticism. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) disputed the finding, calling it “scientifically impossible.”
Further investigation added new complexities.
Journalist Annabel Hernandez offers another theory. She said students commandeering buses to Mexico City – a routine practice tolerated by bus companies – to clandestinely transport heroin.
According to her theory, Mexican troops intercepted the shipment on behalf of drug traffickers, resulting in the student’s death, to eliminate any witnesses.
As a presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador repeatedly promised to spare no effort in the case of the 43, and as president, he established a “truth commission” to reopen the case case and promised to pursue it regardless of the evidence.
Later, about a dozen soldiers and former Justice Minister Jesus Murillo Karam were arrested. However, nearly all of the detainees were subsequently released.
Separately, independent investigators abruptly withdrew from Mexico last year, citing a series of problems with national authorities, including a “lack of information,” “secrecy” and “hidden evidence.”
In February, the missing student’s family announced they would stop contacting the committee out of frustration with the military’s lack of transparency.
Luz María is convinced that López Obrador’s government blocked the investigation when it began to close in on the military.
“Given the failure of investigations under Mr. Lopez Obrador, he never gave us answers,” she told the BBC at the start of the march.
“Things started to get tricky when we told him that the Mexican military was responsible for our children’s disappearance and he didn’t want to investigate further,” she claimed.
Luz María worries that the military now plays an outsized role in López Obrador’s government, responsible for everything from government infrastructure projects to national security.
“The army is a criminal in uniform,” was her cruel assessment.
As the march marched in the rain along Mexico City’s Reform Avenue, a group of young indigenous student teachers chanted defiantly, anger evident in their voices.
They are angry that, a decade on, they are still demanding to know what happened to their friend and fear the impunity in the case means it could easily be repeated in the future.
Earlier in the day, during a morning press conference, President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador insisted that the outgoing government had “made every effort to find the students.”
He publicly called their disappearance a “state crime” and reassured the families that his government “will not protect anyone.”
“We want to know everything,” he said. “But things have become complicated and tangled because of different interests.”
As protesters paused for a minute in front of a monument commemorating the 43rd anniversary, Margarito Guerrero, the father of Jhosivani, another kidnapped teenager, said the president’s assurances were no longer relevant. significance.
In fact, he believes Mexican officials deliberately put obstacles in the way of relatives to prevent them from learning the truth.
“We feel like they’ve been torturing us for years, trying to tire us out. But we’re not tired,” he said with a smile. “If they don’t give us answers, we move on. To us, our children are alive until we see evidence to the contrary.
Drenched protesters – their feet wet but their resolve unwavering – arrived at their final destination, Mexico City’s main square, the Zocalo.
The parents of the victims, among those most affected by the horrific events of a decade ago, took to the podium to address the crowd. Behind them, the National Palace, Mexico’s seat of power, is surrounded by a steel ring.
As fierce left-wing speakers delivered speeches about the 43’s place in the broader struggle between indigenous poor and the Mexican government, the roadblocks represented more than just fences.
They are another barrier between the Mexican government and the families of the victims.
Parents count loudly “one, two, three, four” until they reach 43, a number that in Mexico is now one of the worst human rights violations in modern history.
“They took them away alive and we hope they come back alive,” they shouted again in the rainy night.
