10 Year Anniversary of the 43 Missing Students From Ayotzinapa, Mexico

26 September, 2024

On the morning of September 26, 2024 Mexico City was awaken by a small yet powerful earthquake. The cold, rainy morning air was filled with grief and a sense of stagnation. That morning marked 10 years of the dissapearence of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. On the night of September 26, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero, students from the “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa were attacked by municipal police. 43 of the students went missing that night.

Ten years later, thousands of people took to the streets in Mexico City demanding long awaited answers. Students from around the country journied to the capitol in support of their missing classmates. Mothers and fathers of the 43 students were also in attendance. Their faces filled with exaustion from the last 10 years of searching fro their sons. Hilda Legideño, mother of Jorge Antonio Tizapa Legideño, one of the 43 missing students of Ayotzinapa shared with the crowd of protesters, “As parents, we sometimes don’t know what to do or what to say anymore. We want to stop, but we can’t because we are missing a son at home.” To this day this case has advanced very little, and the 43 students have yet to be found.

Since 2018, over 114,000 people have disappeared in Mexico. The disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa has become a symbolic case for the epidemic of disappearances in Mexico. The chant “Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos” (Alive they were taken, Alive we want them returned), can be heard throughout the country, as more and more people go missing everyday.