10 years on, case of 43 missing students still haunts Mexico

AYOTZINAPA, Mexico — A decade after their children vanished, the parents of 43 Mexican students presumed to have been massacred hope that a new president will finally reveal the truth about the tragedy.

"We'll keep fighting until we get truth and justice," vowed Maria de Jesus Tlatempa, whose son Jose Eduardo was 19 when he disappeared.

The case of the students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college in the southern state of Guerrero is considered one of the worst human rights atrocities in Mexico, where a spiral of drug-related violence has left more than 100,000 people missing.

After their disappearance shocked the nation, "people started approaching us to tell us that they had also been looking for a missing person, a daughter or a son, for years," Tlatempa told AFP.

She hopes that president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum will take up outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's pledge to uncover the facts about what happened on the night of September 26-27, 2014 in the city of Iguala.

"If a man couldn't do it, let a woman," said Tlatempa, who along with other relatives was preparing to mobilize on Wednesday for the start of events marking the sombre anniversary.

Their anger is expected to peak on September 26 with an annual protest march in Mexico City, days before Sheinbaum takes oath as Mexico's first woman president on October 1.

The students from the Ayotzinapa college, whose members have a history of political activism, had commandeered buses to travel to a demonstration in Mexico City when they went missing.

Investigators believe they were kidnapped by a drug cartel in collusion with corrupt police, although exactly what happened to them is unclear.

"Alive they took them! Alive we want them!" the families and their supporters regularly chant at protests.

But 10 years later, the focus has turned to finding the remains as well as the truth about who was responsible, in a country where criminal violence has claimed more than 450,000 lives since 2006.

So far, the remains of only three of the victims have been identified through genetic testing of bone fragments.

'The army knew'

In 2022, a truth commission set up by the government branded the Ayotzinapa case a "state crime" and said the military shared responsibility, either directly or through negligence.

One theory it put forward was that cartel members targeted the students because they had unknowingly taken a bus with drugs hidden inside.

Lopez Obrador says progress has been made by his government, while promising relatives that he will continue working on the case until the final day of his presidency.

Last year, the commission found that the army was aware of what was happening and had real-time information about the kidnapping and disappearance.

"We know that the army knew. They know where our children are," said Tlatempa, lamenting the army's failure to hand over all the documents it has on the case.

Arrest warrants have been issued for dozens of suspects, including military personnel and a former attorney general who led a controversial investigation into the mass disappearance.

Since attendance at the Ayotzinapa college is free, the tragedy struck families from modest backgrounds without enough money to put their children through private education.

"My son wanted to study engineering. But since I had cancer at the time, I told him to choose a school where he can finish his studies, because I'm not going to be able to help you with your education," Tlatempa said.

"We are people with low incomes," she added.

Such free teacher training colleges have always been considered by the authorities as a "nest of guerrillas" and "activists," said former student Manuel Vazquez Arellano, now a ruling party lawmaker.

They could not know it when their children were born, but the victims' relatives have also become activists over the years.

"We had never spoken in public. I never imagined that one day I would go to the government palace," said Estanislao Mendoza, who remembers his son Miguel Angel as a fun-loving 33-year-old.

"He wanted to be a teacher after working for years as a hairdresser," he said.

Mendoza recognizes progress has been made under Lopez Obrador, including the detention of soldiers in connection with the case.

"But they don't tell us where our children are," he said.