On this day in 2014, forty-three male students disappeared from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College after being forcibly abducted in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. They were allegedly taken into custody by local police officers from Iguala and Cocula in collusion with organized crime. The mass kidnapping has caused continued international protests and social unrest, leading to the resignation of Guerrero Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero in the face of state-wide protests on October 23, 2014.
The students had annually commandeered several buses to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre; police attempted to intercept several of the buses by using roadblocks and firing weapons. Details remain unclear on what happened during and after the roadblock, but the government investigation concluded that 43 of the students were taken into custody and were handed over to the local Guerreros Unidos (‘United Warriors’) drug cartel and probably killed. This official version from the Mexican government is disputed. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) assembled a panel of experts who conducted a six-month investigation in 2015. They stated that the government’s claim that the students were killed in a garbage dump because they were mistaken for members of a drug gang was “scientifically impossible”.
Mexican authorities also claimed that José Luis Abarca Velázquez, the mayor of Iguala and a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), masterminded the abduction with his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, as they wanted to prevent them from disrupting campaign events held in the city, although neither of them were put on trial for the students’ disappearance. Both fled after the incident, were arrested about a month later in Mexico City for the murder of activist Arturo Hernández Cardona. Iguala’s police chief, Felipe Flores Velásquez, was also arrested in Iguala on October 21, 2016.
On November 7, 2014, Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam gave a press conference in which he announced that several plastic bags had been found by a river in Cocula containing human remains, possibly those of the missing students. At least 80 suspects have been arrested in the case, 44 of whom were police officers. Two students have been confirmed dead after their remains were identified by the Austria-based University of Innsbruck. Other sources have alleged a cover-up, stating that the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army was directly involved in the kidnapping and murder.
-Wikipedia
Photo Caption – A collage of photos the missing students issued by the Government of Guerrero – Wikipedia
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