On March 6, several dozen people, who were demonstrating Wednesday against the kidnapping and disappearance in 2014 of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, broke down one of the doors of the presidential palace in Mexico City with a van before entering in the palace with masked faces. Demonstrators had already tried to attack the doors of the National Palace, seat of the presidency since 2018. This is the first time in years that they have achieved their goal.
Relatives of the 43 disappeared, accompanied by their lawyers, activists and students, demonstrate regularly in the center of Mexico City, especially as the anniversary of the tragedy approaches. A camp in their memory is set up on the main artery in the center of the capital, opposite the national palace. The Ayotzinapa students disappeared on the night of September 27, 2014 after traveling to Iguala, Guerrero state, where they were preparing to board several buses to travel to the capital Mexico City and participate to a demonstration.
The students — known as the Ayotzinapa 43 — hailed from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, a school with a history of left-wing organizing, in the southern state of Guerrero.
They went missing in September 2014 after they commandeered buses as part of an annual tradition to drive to Mexico City to mark the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre.
But they were intercepted by police turned over to local cartels associated with the police and military, and subsequently murdered.
Some charred bone fragments have been recovered and matched through DNA to three of the missing students. The rest of the bodies, however, have never been found.
In 2022, a government truth commission concluded the disappearance was a “state crime”, given the involvement of local, state and federal authorities in the students’ abduction and subsequent cover-up.
