-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On September 26, 2014, at approximately 9:30 p.m. (CST), more than 100 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College of Ayotzinapa in Tixtla, Guerrero, travelled to Iguala, Guerrero, to hold a protest for what they considered discriminatory hiring and funding practices from the government. The students claimed that the government's funding programs favored urban student-colleges above the rural ones and preferentially hired teachers from inner city areas. The students had previously attempted to make their way to Chilpancingo, but state and federal authorities blocked the routes that led to the capital. Allegedly, In Iguala, their plan was to interrupt the annual DIF conference of María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, local President of the organization and the wife of Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez. The purpose of the conference and after-party was to celebrate her public works, and to promote her campaign as the next mayor of Iguala. The student-teachers also had plans to solicit transportation costs to Mexico City for the anniversary march of the 1968 student massacre in Tlatelolco. However, on their way there, the students were intercepted by the Iguala municipal police force, reportedly on orders of the mayor.
The details of what followed during the students' clash with the police vary. According to police reports, the police chased the students because they had hijacked three buses and attempted to drive them off to carry out the protests and then return to their college. Members of the student union, however, stated that they had been protesting and were hitchhiking when they clashed with the police. As the buses sped away and the chase ensued, the police opened fire on the vehicles. Two students were killed in one of the buses, while some fled into the surrounding hills. Roughly three hours later, escaped students returned to the scene to speak with reporters. In a related incident, unidentified gunmen fired at a bus carrying players from a local football team, which they had presumably mistaken for one of the buses hijacked by the student protestors. Bullets struck the bus and hit two taxis. The bus driver, a football player, and a woman inside one of the taxis were killed. The next morning, the authorities discovered the corpse of a student who had attempted to run away during the gunfire. His eyes had been gouged out and the skin of his face flayed to a bare skull. In total, 6 people were killed and 25 wounded.
After the shootout, eyewitnesses said that students were rounded up and forced into police vehicles. Once in custody, the students were taken to the police station in Iguala and then handed over to the police in Cocula. Cocula deputy police chief César Nava González then ordered his subordinates to transport the students to a rural community known as Pueblo Viejo. At some point, while still alive, the students were handed over by the police to members of the Guerreros Unidos ("United Warriors"), a criminal organization in Guerrero.
Initially, 57 students were reported missing; fourteen of them, however, were located after it was found that they had returned to their families or had made it back safely to their college. The remaining 43 were still unaccounted for. Student activists accused authorities of illegally holding the missing students, but Guerrero authorities said that none of the students were in custody. Believing that the missing students had fled through the hills during the shootout, authorities deployed a helicopter to search them. The 43 students, however, were never found.
The mass disappearance of the 43 students marked arguably the biggest political and public security crisis Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had yet faced in his administration (2012–2018). The incident drew worldwide attention and led to protests across Mexico, and international condemnation. The resulting outrage triggered near-constant protests, particularly in Guerrero and Mexico City. Many of them were peaceful marches headed by the missing students' parents, who come from poverty-stricken families in rural Mexico. Other demonstrations turned violent, with protesters attacking government buildings. Unlike other high-profile cases that have occurred during the Mexican Drug War (2006–present), this case resonated particularly strongly because it highlighted the level of collusion organized crime had reached in local governments and police agencies.
Mexican authorities believe Iguala's mayor, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa to be the probable masterminds of the abduction. Both of them fled after the incident, along with the town's police chief, Felipe Flores Velásquez. The couple were arrested about a month later in Mexico City. The events also led to attacks on government buildings, and the resignation of the Governor of Guerrero, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, in the face of statewide protests. The mass kidnapping of the students arguably became the biggest political and public security scandal Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had faced during his administration. It led to nationwide protests, particularly in the state of Guerrero and Mexico City, and international condemnation.
Eight other cartel members were also arrested. The mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, has been accused of direct participation in the earlier torture and murder of an activist; the mayor's wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, is the sister of known members of the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. On October 22, 2014, the federal government stated that Abarca had ordered the arrest of the students in order to prevent them from obstructing a municipal event. The PGR described him and his wife as the probable masterminds of the mass kidnapping. The director of the Iguala police force, Felipe Flores, was also mentioned as one of the main perpetrators. In Mexico City over 50,000 protesters demonstrated in support of the missing students. Joining the protests in Morelia, Michoacán, were members of Mexico's movie industry – actors, directors, writers and producers- who lit 43 candles on the steps of a Morelia theater. In Venezuela, students also demonstrated in support at the Central University of Venezuela. In the U.S. state of Texas, students and professors rallied at the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. The name of each disappeared student was read out and signatures were gathered for an open letter of protest to the Mexican consulate. Protests also took place in London, Paris, Vienna and Buenos Aires.
A mass grave, initially believed to contain the charred bodies of 28 of the students, was discovered near Iguala on October 5, 2014. They had been tortured and, according to reports, burned alive. Subsequent reports increased the estimate of the number of bodies found to 34. On October 14, 2014, police announced that forensic tests had shown that none of the 28 bodies from the first mass grave corresponded to the missing students, but on the same day four additional graves, with an unknown number of bodies, were discovered.
On November 7, 2014, the Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam gave a press conference in which he announced that several plastic bags containing human remains, possibly those of the missing students, had been found by a river in Cocula, Guerrero. He said that over 70 suspects had been arrested, including members of Guerreros Unidos who had confessed to killing the students and disposing of their remains. Investigations are underway to identify the remains. According to some statements (whose veracity have been questioned by others), the students were taken to a dump in the outskirts of Cocula. About 15 students died of suffocation by the time they reached the site. The rest of the students were then killed. Three suspects then dumped the bodies in a pit, and some other suspects known only by their aliases burned the corpses with diesel, gasoline, tires, wood and plastic.
On November 9, 2014, there was a demonstration in Mexico City during which the protesters carried handmade banners with the words "Ya me cansé" ("I've Had Enough" or "I'm Tired"), in reference to a comment made by Mexico's attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, at a press conference on the Iguala kidnapping. Protesters also chanted: "Fue el Estado" (“It was the State”). Some masked protesters broke away from the otherwise peaceful demonstration as it drew to a close, tore down the protective metal fences set up around the National Palace in Mexico City's main Zócalo plaza and set fire to its imposing wooden door. Clashes with riot police followed before the square was cleared.
On November 20, 2014, the relatives of 43 missing Mexican students arrived in Mexico City after touring the country and led mass protests demanding action from the government to find them. Thousands of people took part in three protest marches in the capital. Demonstrators called for a nationwide strike. Several hundred protesters gathered near the National Palace, small groups of protesters were throwing bottles and fireworks at the palace and the police tried to push them back using water cannon. Near Mexico City International Airport before the marches began some 200 hooded protesters threw rocks and petrol bombs at police officers who had been trying to disperse them. Protests also took place in other parts of Mexico and abroad. Mexican President Peña Nieto accused some of the protesters of trying to "destabilize" the state.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And well, at the same time all this information appears, some media have brought to light cases of corruption by the president, as a 7 million dollar mansion (which supposedly does not belong to the president ... belongs to his wife. So they say that's ok.) I'm sick of crime in Mexico. I'm sick of being a great country with a corrupt government. It is something that we suffer every day ... and I, I'm tired. #YaMeCanse.
I love Mexico, but I love its people, not their government. Mexico is tired. Here, we tried to achieve a change. We want a country with justice, peace, education, work...
But it is much easier to achieve change if we are not alone. So I come today to explain everything that is happening in my country, asking you for your support. Moral support, nothing more. Not to me, but to Mexico. Parents and friends of the 43 missing students are just the tip of the iceberg of all that Mexico feel. I know this whole thing does not appear much in the media, but I know that there are families and universities worldwide who are helping, creating information campaigns, making videos and marches in major sites or Mexican embassies. Everyone can help from their own conditions. If Mexico changed, for the better, not only will affect the country: The world will become a better place. Thank you.
