A Decade On, San Diego Protesters Keep Hope Alive in Search for 43 Mexican Students

It was a breathtaking act of corruption and cruelty: dozens of students in Mexico’s rural Guerrero state were reported missing on Sept. 26, 2014, following a purported conflict with an armed paramilitary group.

Ten years later, after lies and misdirection from Mexico’s military and politicians up to and including its president, it remains unclear where the students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa are. Authorities believe they were killed, but have only turned up small bone fragments from three of them.

But family members and allies have not forgotten the Ayotzinapa 43.

A small group gathered outside the Mexican Consulate in San Diego on Thursday morning to keep up an international pressure campaign to find the students, or at least get Mexico to reveal what it knows about their fates. They spoke, played music, and chalked art and messages on the sidewalk, as huge photographs of the missing students lined both sides of the street in front of the building.

“This is the tenth year of our protest,” said Luis Villanueva Rodríguez, a community advocate and one of Thursday’s protest organizers.

Villanueva said that he was educated in Mexico at a sister school to Ayotzinapa’s, which is part of a national education system that came out of the Mexican Revolution and emphasizes social justice, progressive values, and responsibility to the community. The system intentionally serves impoverished and Indigenous communities within Mexico.

“That’s the reason I’m standing here… otherwise, education would have been impossible because we didn’t have enough money.”

He said that he feels a responsibility to stand against the lies and misdirection perpetuated by Mexico’s government in the case of the Ayotzinapa 43.

All countries have crimes that resonate. In Mexico, this case is one of them, emblematic of political corruption and alleged state-sponsored violence and the lies and misdirection that accompany them.

The families of the disappeared, with the support of the school known for its radical activism, continue to demand justice along with supporters and allies around the world.

They maintain a lack of political will is responsible for not finding the truth. If it was a “state crime” as the current administration says, the government must know what happened and who is hiding information.

The students were attacked by security forces linked to a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, in Iguala, when the students were stealing buses — a tradition in the region — to transport themselves to a protest.

During the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, which lasted from 2012 to 2018, authorities said the students had gone to Iguala, Guerrero to protest at an event — the mayor, now jailed, was linked to local gang Guerreros Unidos. The victims were allegedly mistaken for members of a rival gang.

The Peña Nieto administration said that Guerreros Unidos had abducted and killed the students, burned their bodies in a huge fire and tossed their ashes into a river.

But subsequent investigations by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the successor Attorney General’s Office and a Truth Commission created in 2019, found that the fire at a dump was a lie built on false statements extracted under torture and manipulated evidence.

Those subsequent investigations found that an enormous operation was put in motion that night involving members of Guerreros Unidos, but also local, state, and federal police. And the army was aware of everything that was happening because it had a base in Iguala, soldiers in the streets and spies among the students.

Investigators said members of the army were involved with the gang in smuggling heroin from the mountains of Guerrero on buses to the United States. Prosecutors said the decision to hide the truth was taken at the highest levels of government.

There are now more than 100 people in custody and dozens have been charged, but no one has been convicted.

At the end of the previous administration, Mexican courts determined that the investigation was plagued by errors and manipulation. There were dozens of cases of torture.

Those abuses and missteps led to many of those involved being released. Some have been arrested again under the current administration.

The highest-ranking person charged is former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, who is accused of torture, forced disappearance and obstruction of justice. There are also 16 soldiers, most of whom are awaiting trial on house arrest, which infuriates the students’ families.

President Andres Manuel López Obrador had promised to find the students and hold those responsible accountable. But in 2022, when more and more evidence pointed toward the military’s involvement in the attack and cover-up the administration’s tone changed.

The president had ordered the military to open its archives to investigators. That didn’t happen. Instead, López Obrador shifted more power and responsibility to the military than any president in recent history.

The prosecutor leading the investigation, Omar García Trejo, was suddenly demoted after he sought arrest orders for two dozen soldiers. He was replaced by someone unfamiliar with the case.

There was also growing political pressure to show results, said Santiago Aguirre, one of the families’ lawyers. The administration presented some evidence that did not appear to come from reliable sources and the government’s searches turned slipshod.

The families’ lawyers point out that key arrests are still lacking, among them the man who led the investigation during the Peña Nieto administration, Tomás Zerón. In videos, Zerón is seen interrogating and threatening prisoners. He sought refuge in Israel, which has not agreed to extradite him despite Mexico’s request.

They also say they want to see military intelligence records from that night that they still haven’t had access to. Additionally, they want more cooperation from the United States government, which has prosecuted members of Guerreros Unidos in drug trafficking cases that also revealed their ties to the military.

In a country with more than 115,000 registered disappearances, this case continues to hold the public’s attention because it combined cartel violence and corrupt authorities and remains stubbornly unresolved.

It is considered an emblematic case, as well as an example of the types of abuses that took place decades ago in Mexico’s dirty war and were never corrected.

Associated Press contributed to this report.