Will the lost Mexico ever be found?

On Friday, September 26, 2014, a group of Mexican students boarded a bus in the city of Iguala. Members of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, in the southern state of Guerrero, were hoping to reach Mexico City for an event marking the anniversary of the infamous Tlatelolco massacre. On that day in 1968, hundreds of students were shot by security forces, while others were tortured and falsely imprisoned. Some simply disappeared and were never seen again. The outrage itself would soon be followed by a monumental cover-up, ultimately becoming the defining event of recent Mexican history.

The students of Ayotzinapa did not know that history was about to repeat itself. As night fell, their buses were stopped by police barricades. There, on a lonely stretch of highway, they were attacked by officers and members of the local drug cartel. Many students were shot, several were hospitalized, and one was found dead on the side of the road with part of his face torn away. But it wasn’t until the next morning that the full extent of the horror became clear: 43 students could not be accounted for. A decade later Due to their disappearance, they are presumed dead. Their bodies were never found.

As the Tlatelolco massacre became the defining moment of Mexico’s authoritarian past, “the 43” have become the symbol of the country’s stumbling democratic transition. After all, there are more than 110,000 of them desaparecidos (“disappeared”) throughout Mexico, anonymous men and women who disappeared one day and never came home. Everywhere you go you are reminded of them, as their faces stare back at you from countless monochrome posters. Each, of course, represents a personal tragedy. But like Tlatelolco, the Ayotzinapa students’ cause has grown from strength to strength over the years. and ten years later it represents abuse of state power in its most absolute form.

“The case of the Ayotzinapa students has gained momentum over the years and, on its tenth anniversary, represents the abuse of state power in its most absolute form.”

Although Mexicans disappeared in the 1990s, the modern epidemic of disappearances really began in 2006. That year, President Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs. As gangs defended their territory, both against the police and each other, the republic drowned in an ocean of blood. The next 18 years, Mexico past some 431,000 murders, of random shootings Unpleasant organized beheadings. In addition to the violence, disappearances have also become normalized. Besides this one 113,000 desaparecidosAfter all, 4,000 clandestine graves have also been found.