9 years later
Today marks a grim anniversary: nine years ago, a group of students from the Ayotzinapa teaching college in Iguala, Guerrero was attacked by police. In the early hours of Sept. 27, 2014 six people were left dead (three students and three civilians) and 43 students had disappeared. The partial remains of just three have been identified since.
This atrocity has now darkened two presidential administrations, albeit in different ways. President López Obrador’s administration was lambasted by critics today, as barricades were installed around the National Palace in anticipation of protests. Media outlets are reporting as of this evening that 5,000 marched in Mexico City today, peacefully. The rift between this government and the victims’ families appears to be widening, after meetings held last week and today which left them unsatisfied in their demands for more information—particularly, information from the military. AMLO insisted to reporters today that the army has “handed over all the information they have.”
The families’ lawyer, Vidulfo Rosales, compared the government’s latest report on the case (published today) to the maligned narrative presented by the last administration as the “historical truth.” The former attorney general under President Enrique Peña Nieto, Jesús Murillo Karam, is currently in prison awaiting trial for his role in fabricating this version of events.
Journalist John Gibler, who was on the ground in Iguala shortly after the 43 went missing in 2014, published a lengthy piece on “how the government imploded the Ayotzinapa investigation” including an interview with Omar Gómez Trejo, the former special prosecutor who resigned a year ago. He quotes one of the members of Gómez’s team: “Omar’s departure doesn’t just mean imploding the case, which is serious and complicated. It also means dismantling the beginnings of how to confront the harshest reality this country faces, which is over 100,000 disappearances.”
I’ll come back to this soon, but in the meantime, I share below the posts I have written so far in relation to the case on The Mexpatriate.
From Sept. 4, 2022: Ayotzinapa: Truth and/or Justice?
From Oct. 3, 2022: Ayotzinapa update: canceled warrants, a resignation and leaked information
From Aug. 6, 2023: Ayotzinapa: The wound that won’t heal
Thank you for reading, and as always, send me your feedback by commenting below or sending an email to hola@themexpatriate.com.