Protesters in Mexico seek whereabouts of 43 people

Thousands of protesters on Saturday wore red and carried symbolic coffins during a demonstration in Mexico City, demanding answers about the 43 trainee teachers who went missing 12 years ago.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who regularly meets with the disappeared people’s families, is expected to present a report today on the latest progress in the case, following an exhaustive review of the evidence by the attorney general’s office.

“Because they were taken alive, we want them back alive,” one banner slogan read.

A demonstrator holds up a box with a cross on it during a protest in Mexico City on Saturday.

Photo: Reuters

The protest was led by parents of the 43 teacher trainees from Ayotzinapa, who led the procession to the capital’s main square, where the government palace is located.

Others counted to 43 several times to honor each of the trainees from the rural teachers’ college who disappeared on Sept. 26, 2014.

“Another year of strain, of exhaustion, of hopelessness,” said Estanislao Mendoza, one of the parents of the 43.

“We want to know, whether it’s good or bad, alive or dead, but to know the truth, to know where they are,” he said. “Twelve years of suffering, of lies.”

The students were traveling from Guerrero state to a protest in Mexico City. Local police stopped them in the town of Iguala, where six died in an hours-long street clash and 43 later went missing.

Prosecutors initially said the officers delivered the 43 teacher trainees to drug cartel hitmen, who killed them, incinerated their bodies and dumped the remains in a river.

However, independent human rights experts have rejected the government’s conclusion, and the unsolved case remains a stain on Mexico’s reputation.

A former governor was arrested last month, on accusations of deleting the security videos of the scene of the crime in Iguala. The former state attorney general was also arrested in 2022.

More than 134,000 people are listed as disappeared in Mexico.

“It’s necessary to support a struggle against the indifference of a government that refuses to accept that there is a disappearance crisis,” said 69-year-old Atanacio Pina, whose missing son was later found dead.