Families Protesting for the Investigation of the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping
Forty-three male students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were abducted from Iguala, Mexico on September 16, 2014. Allegedly, the local Cocula and Iguala police, in collusion with organized crime, took the students into custody. From police reports, the students reportedly annually commandeered buses to travel to Mexico City as commemoration of the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, while the police were known to have attempted intercepting the buses before using firearms.
All 43 were young, male students at a teacher training college in Guerrero state
Through government investigation, it was determined that during a roadblock imposed by the government, the students were all taken into custody and handed to the local crime syndicate, “Guerreros Unidos” and killed, although details are unclear as to what exactly happened. The Inter-American Commision on Human Rights personally performed a six-month long investigation in 2015 and concluded the government’s claim that the students were killed because they were mistaken for members from a local drug gang was impossible. Authorities also blamed the Iguala Mayor, José luis Abarca Velázquez for being the mastermind of the abduction as they wanted to prevent the students from disrupting events in the city. However, neither the mayor nor his wife were ever put on trial, but instead, fled.
The mass kidnapping has led to outrage from international rights groups and social unrest, and caused the resignation of Guerrero governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero in October of 2014. Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam announced that plastic bags containing human remains, possibly those of the students, were found by a river, in a press conference on November 7th of that year. 80 suspects were arrested as suspects for the case, of which 44 were police officers, and two students were confirmed as dead when their remains were verified. Investigative journalist Anabel Hernández, suggests that this was a government coverup for a drug lord. She claims two of the buses were transporting heroin and the students were unaware. She also states that a drug lord ordered the interception of the drugs and since the students were witnesses to the attack, they were killed. When a new President was elected, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on December 3rd, 2018, he ordered new investigations into the event. José Ángel Casarrubias Salgadoalias was arrested in June 2020 as the leader of the Guerreros Unidos Cartel and is suspected to have been responsible for the abductions and murders of the students. However, the government ordered the detainment of Tomas Zeron in September 2020, who was an investigator into the case.
The families of the students have yet to be given an answer as to what exactly happened to their children.
Families of those missing continue to demand answers, while President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (centre) has pledged to take action
Citation:
“NPR Cookie Consent And Choices”. Npr.Org, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2018/10/21/658900014/what-happened-to-mexicos-missing-43-students-in-a-massacre-in-mexico. Accessed 6 Dec 2020.