BBCBy way of driving rain, Luz Maria Telumbre travelled to Mexico Metropolis from the western state of Guerrero to mark 10 years because the darkest evening of her life.
Her son, Cristian Alfonso, ought to be nearing his thirtieth birthday.
As a substitute, she’s carrying a picture of him frozen in time – at simply 19, when he and his classmates have been kidnapped by Mexican police.
Christian was one in all 43 scholar lecturers travelling from the Ayotzinapa instructor coaching faculty, which has a robust historical past of activism, to an annual protest in Mexico Metropolis.
The scholars disappeared from the town of Iguala, and have been final seen on safety digicam footage mendacity face-down on the again of police pick-up vans as they have been spirited out of the town.
The total story of the insidious relationship between the state and the cartels in Guerrero – and its half within the college students’ abduction – has by no means been totally established.
Within the intervening years, Luz Maria and the opposite victims’ dad and mom have been calling for a similar factor. “Alive they took them, alive we would like them again,” they chant.
In essence, it’s a name for the authorities to make clear precisely what occurred to their youngsters that evening on 26 September 2014, to confess full culpability and to prosecute these concerned.
An preliminary investigation, below then-President Enrique Peña Nieto, concluded that corrupt municipal police from Iguala and surrounding cities, appearing on orders from the native mayor, handed the scholars over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.
In line with the investigation, the cartel killed the scholars and disposed of their stays, whereas federal police and navy have been deemed to be uninvolved.
Nonetheless, this model – labelled “the historic fact” – was met with widespread scepticism. The Inter-American Fee on Human Rights (IACHR) challenged the findings, calling them “scientifically unimaginable”.
Additional investigations have added new layers of complexity.
Journalist Anabel Hernández offered an alternate idea. She steered that buses commandeered by the scholars to take them to Mexico Metropolis – a daily apply which was tolerated by the bus corporations – have been secretly transporting heroin.
Beneath her idea, the Mexican Military, appearing on behalf of drug traffickers, intercepted the cargo, resulting in the scholars’ deaths to eradicate any witnesses.
As a presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador made repeated guarantees to go away no stone unturned within the case of the 43, and as president, he established a “fact fee” to reopen the case – promising to comply with the proof wherever it led.
Round a dozen troopers have been subsequently arrested in addition to the previous Legal professional Common Jesus Murillo Karam. Nonetheless, nearly all of these detained have since been subsequently launched.
Moreover, the unbiased investigators abruptly withdrew from Mexico final yr citing a raft of points with state authorities together with a “ignorance”, “secrecy” and “hidden proof”.
In February, the households of the lacking college students introduced they might stop contact with the fee as a result of frustrations over the navy’s lack of transparency.
Luz Maria firmly believes Lopez Obrador’s administration blocked the investigation because it started to shut in on the navy.
“Given how the investigation collapsed below Mr Lopez Obrador, he by no means gave us a solution,” she advised the BBC because the march started to get underway.
“Issues started to get tough once we advised him the Mexican military was accountable for the disappearance of our kids and he didn’t wish to examine any additional,” she claims.
Luz Maria is anxious that the navy now performs an outsized position in Mr Lopez Obrador’s administration, accountable for the whole lot from the development of presidency infrastructure initiatives to nationwide safety.
“The military are criminals dressed up in navy,” is her brutal evaluation.
Because the march makes its manner by means of the rain down Mexico Metropolis’s Reforma Avenue, teams of younger indigenous scholar lecturers chant defiantly, the craze evident of their voices.
They’re incensed that, a decade on, they’re nonetheless demanding to know what occurred to their buddies, and fearful that the impunity of this case means it may simply be repeated sooner or later.
Earlier within the day at his morning press convention, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador insisted his outgoing authorities had accomplished “the whole lot (it) may to search out the scholars”.
He has publicly referred to as their disappearance a “state crime” and once more assured the households his administration was “not defending anybody”.
“We needed to know the whole lot”, he stated. “However issues bought difficult and tangled due to totally different pursuits.”
Because the protesters pause for a minute at a monument erected to the 43, Margarito Guerrero, the daddy of one other kidnapped teenager, Jhosivani, says the president’s assurances now not quantity to a lot.
Actually, he believes officialdom in Mexico has intentionally positioned obstacles within the kin’ path to stop them from reaching the reality.
“We really feel like they’ve strung us alongside for years to attempt to tire us out. However we’re not drained”, he says with a touch of a smile. “And in the event that they don’t give us a solution, we’ll maintain going. For us, our kids are nonetheless alive till we see some proof on the contrary.”
The drenched protesters – their ft moist however their resolve unbroken – attain their remaining vacation spot, Mexico Metropolis’s important plaza, the Zócalo.
The victims’ dad and mom, these most affected by the horrible occasions of a decade in the past, stroll onto a stage to handle the gang. Behind them, the Nationwide Palace, Mexico’s seat of energy, is cordoned off by a hoop of metal.
As fiery left-wing audio system ship speeches concerning the 43’s place in a wider wrestle between the indigenous poor and the Mexican state, the barricades signify greater than only a fence.
They’re one other type of barrier between the Mexican Authorities, led by a president who promised to unravel what occurred that evening, and the households.
“One, 2, 3, 4” the dad and mom rely out loud, till they attain 43, a quantity now synonymous in Mexico with one of many worst human rights violations in its fashionable historical past.
“Alive they took them, alive we would like them again,” they shout as soon as extra into the rain-soaked evening.
