Mexico Reopens Ayotzinapa 43 Case Upon 5-Year Anniversary of Disappearance

Activists created this monument to commemorate the missing students. (Flickr)

Mexico reopened an investigation into the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural College for Teachers in the state of Guerrero during the week of September 19. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his staff addressed the media and the victims’ families and briefed them on the developments of the new investigation during his daily news conference on September 26. Mexico’s undersecretary of human rights, Alejandro Encinas, said “we will make a comprehensive rethinking of the investigation, correcting the omissions, contradictions, and the lack of evidence that led to the so-called ‘historical truth’.” 

Obrador inherited the case after former President Enrique Peña Nieto failed to make any progress during his term. Now, he has called for an investigation into the officials responsible for the previous investigation during the term of his predecessor.

The special prosecutor of the case, Omar Gomez, said the investigation involves “a long list of politicians that bear different degrees of responsibilities” under the administration of President Peña Nieto. This includes the former head of the Criminal Investigation Agency Tomás Zerón de Lucio and former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam and his top aides. Both were criticized by the students’ families and human rights advocates for their handling of the case.

Five years ago, on the night of September 24, 2014, the 43 male students of Iguala were taking buses to Mexico City to participate in a commemoration of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre when they were supposedly abducted and massacred themselves. 

Several details of that day still remain unclear, but it is believed that the students on some of the buses were taken into the custody of local police and eventually killed. As of now, authorities have only definitively identified the remains of one of the 43 students.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador set up a commission last year under the direction of undersecretary Alejandro Encinas that has the responsibility of looking into the handling of the case. In December, Obrador stressed that “the whole government is going to help with this plan and I can assure you that there will be no impunity either in this sad and painful case or in any other.”