This September 26 we commemorate four years since the 43 students of the Normal Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, were disappeared by Mexican security forces. The students were abducted by municipal police and criminal structures, in coordination with federal and state police who, having knowledge of the events, did nothing to impede them.
We echo the political demands of survivors and families of the 43 students, who have maintained an unwavering struggle in the face of a terrorist state. This case is but one of the thousands of other cases of enforced disappearances, and it has become a symbol of the more than 37,000 disappeared persons and the more than 150,000 persons killed under the “war on drugs”, backed through the funding, equipment and military training of the US. The case of Ayotzinapa also exposed the serious crisis of enforced disappearances in Mexico, that now includes thousands of Central American migrants and refugees.
We join the request of the families that ask for the return of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI by its Spanish acronym) to continue paving the path towards truth. The GIEI, of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), has successfully dismantled the “historical truth” of the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, and has set forth clear recommendations to continue solving the case.
We affirm our solidarity with the families of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, and with all families that tirelessly struggle to find their disappeared throughout Mexico, and who keep alive the demands for truth and justice. We will continue to demand accountability, not only to the Mexican state, but also to the US state, and we will continue to make the connections between militarized US foreign policy and violence in Mexico.
Four years after the disappearance of the students of Ayotzinapa, we demand truth and justice with measures of reparation for the 43 disappeared students, for the 6 persons killed, and for all disappeared persons in Mexico.
They were taken alive, we want them back alive!
43 students of Ayotzinapa, PRESENTES!