Relatives of the 43 from Ayotzinapa: “From the beginning we pointed to the Army and the police officers who participated in this State crime”

Forty-three names.

One behind the other.

Shouted with all the force of the lungs, in disjointed faces, under a torrential rain that hits Mexico City on the last Friday of August.

It is the 26th and like every month for almost eight years, the relatives of the 43 missing students from the rural normal school of Ayotzinapa (Guerrero) demonstrate in the streets of the capital, in an attack perpetrated by police and criminals the night of 26 and the morning of September 27, 2014. This last protest, however, has something different.

The investigation has taken a turn that no one expected: in just two weeks, the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice recognized that the kidnapping of the young people was a "state crime";

Jesús Murillo Karam, former Attorney General of Mexico, accused of forced disappearance, was arrested.

torture and obstruction of justice;

A judge ordered the arrest of 20 soldiers and, last Friday, the Government has pointed to an Army colonel as the man who allegedly gave the order to assassinate 6 of the 43 students.

However, relatives of the disappeared still view the new developments with suspicion.

This is how Maximino Hernández Cruz, father of Carlos Lorenzo Hernández Muñoz, sums it up: “It is not enough for us, there is still a long way to go.

This is just beginning".

father of Carlos Lorenzo Hernández Muñoz: “It is not enough for us, there is still a long way to go.

This is just beginning".

father of Carlos Lorenzo Hernández Muñoz: “It is not enough for us, there is still a long way to go.

This is just beginning".

The first piece of news that broke the apparent stagnation of the investigation was the classification of the disappearance of the students as a state crime.

It was the first time that the Government accepted a reality that the relatives had been defending for years.

“Almost eight years until they recognized it as a state crime.

From the beginning, we always point to the Army, the police, all the corporations that participated.

We weren't wrong, we weren't deceiving the people, everything we said is now coming to light that it was," Estanislao Mendoza, father of student Miguel Ángel Mendoza Zacarías, gets angry at the end of the demonstration: more than an hour under a storm electricity through the traffic of Paseo de la Reforma.

“After eight years the Government is assuring that it is a State crime, when the GIEI [Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts] was saying it before with evidence, but in my opinion it is also an advance that they accept it”, summarizes Alexander Salazar (19 years old), a student at the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, the same educational center that the 43 attended.

A child participates in the protest to ask for justice for the 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa.

Rodrigo Oropeza

One day after the Commission's report was published, Murillo Karam was arrested.

He is the first high-level politician to sit on the bench for the 'Ayotzinapa case': the architect of "the historical truth", an official version promoted by the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), who defended that the students were burned in the Cocula landfill and their remains were later thrown into a nearby river.

Independent investigations raised many irregularities, something that the Commission, created during the mandate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also signed.

"We cannot be happy, he is under arrest, he is not on trial," Hernández Cruz clarifies about the former attorney general.

“On the one hand, we see that justice is beginning to be done, but we don't know if he is going to spend more time in jail or if he is going to get out.

We want him to stay and pull [grab] all the others who participated in the historical truth,” Mendoza reasons.

“We are not going to be happy, we want justice and that they be taken to jail like any damn person who did all this,” adds Joaquina García Velázquez, mother of Martín Getsemany Sánchez García, also at the end of the protest.

For now, a judge has ordered Murillo Karam to remain in prison until the trial.

Along with him, justice also ordered the arrest of 20 "military commanders and troop personnel", 44 police officers, 14 alleged members of the Guerreros Unidos criminal group and five "administrative and judicial authorities" from Guerrero.

A student from the Ayotzinapa normal school shouts during the protest for the 43 disappeared youths.

Rodrigo Oropeza

The icing on the cake came this Friday, when the Undersecretary for Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, declared that Colonel José Rodríguez ordered the murder of six of the students.

The revelation has fallen like a sledgehammer on the spirits of the relatives, who after eight years of pilgrimage through the desert in search of their children, are reluctant to believe in anything without solid evidence to back it up.

“It hurt us a lot, we felt deep pain, because Encinas said they were dead.

He has no scientific proof that our children are dead.

It's still a lie until they tell us 'here are the bodies'.

As long as there is nothing, we are going to continue looking for them alive”, synthesizes Mendoza.

—With the new advances, do you feel backed by the Government?

-About.

We are not yet convinced until we have the truth.

"We have been very sad, that information hurt us a lot," agrees García Velázquez.

“It makes us very angry because from the beginning we pointed out who were the people who were involved and they never heard us until now.

We knew all along that the military were involved, but they didn't believe us.

From the beginning they have tried to deceive us.

The president [López Obrador] is different from the previous one [Peña Nieto], he has supported us, but unfortunately he has many people who do not do his job.

We are going to continue in this fight until we have scientific proof.”

The rain continues to fall relentlessly on Mexico City.

The relatives and students of the Ayotzinapa normal school, companions of the 43 disappeared, have endured the type under the water without flinching.

Many wear sandals, typical of rural Guerrero, and their feet and clothing are soaked.

The storm gives an even more tragic aura to the songs and proclamations.

“It remains to continue fighting until the whereabouts of the boys are known and all those responsible are punished.

We are still hoping to find them alive.

There is no scientific proof that says 'here are the remains'.

We still don't accept it”, says Hernández Cruz.

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