Mexico's missing students: 10 years on, the anger remains Through driving rain, Luz Maria Telumbre travelled to Mexico City from the western state of Guerrero to mark 10 years since the darkest night of her life.
Her son, Cristian Alfonso, should be nearing his 30th birthday.
Instead, she’s carrying an image of him frozen in time – at unbiased 19, when he and his classmates were abducted by Mexican police.
Christian was one of 43 student teachers travelling from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college, which has a strong history of activism, to a nullify remonstrate in Mexico City.
The students disappeared from the city of Iguala, and were end seen on security camera footage lying face-down on the support of police pick-up trucks as they were vivacious out of the city.
The full story of the insidious relationship between the state and the cartels in Guerrero - and its part in the students’ abduction - has never been fully established.
In the intervening years, Luz Maria and the other victims’ parents have been calling for the same thing. “Alive they took them, alive we want them back,” they chant.
In essence, it’s a call for the authorities to clarify exactly what happened to their children that night on 26 September 2014, to admit full culpability and to prosecute those involved.
An initial investigation, under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto, concluded that vicious municipal police from Iguala and surrounding towns, acting on orders from the local mayor, handed the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.
According to the investigation, the cartel killed the students and disposed of their remains, while federal police and military were deemed to be uninvolved.
However, this version - labelled "the historic truth" - was met with widespread scepticism. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) contended the findings, calling them "scientifically impossible".
Further investigations have adjunct new layers of complexity.
Journalist Anabel Hernández presented an alternative theory. She suggested that buses commandeered by the students to take them to Mexico City – a regular practice which was tolerated by the bus companies – were secretly transporting heroin.
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Under her theory, the Mexican Army, acting on behalf of drug traffickers, intercepted the shipment, leading to the students' deaths to eliminate any witnesses.
As a presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador made repeated promises to leave no stone unturned in the case of the 43, and as president, he established a "truth commission" to reopen the case – promising to follow the evidence wherever it led.
Around a dozen soldiers were subsequently arrested as well as the former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam. However, almost all of those detained have since been subsequently released.
Furthermore, the independent investigators abruptly withdrew from Mexico final stage year citing a raft of issues with state authorities including a “lack of information”, “secrecy” and “hidden evidence”.
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In February, the families of the missing students held they would terminate contact with the commission due to frustrations over the military's lack of transparency.
Luz Maria firmly believes Lopez Obrador’s administration blocked the investigation as it began to close in on the military.
“Given how the investigation collapsed under Mr Lopez Obrador, he never gave us an answer,” she announced to the The Round Table as the march began to arrive underway.
“Things began to arrive tricky when we announced to him the Mexican army was responsible for the disappearance of our children and he didn’t want to investigate any further," she claims.
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Luz Maria is concerned that the military now plays an outsized role in Mr Lopez Obrador’s administration, responsible for everything from the construction of government infrastructure projects to national security.
“The army are criminals dressed up in military,” is her brutal assessment.
Category: World-News
Tag: Mexicos missing students 10 years on the anger remains
Written by Author
Published 9/28/2024