Mexicans march on anniversary of 43 students’ disappearance
MEXICO CITY — Thousands of people marked the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students by marching down Mexico City’s premier avenue in an atmosphere of defiant hope Saturday.
Activists said the movement might bring justice for Mexico’s disappeared, though only two of the students’ remains have been identified by DNA analysis of charred bone fragments.
While the march was smaller than past demonstrations, the case has helped publicize the thousands who have gone missing since Mexico’s drug war started in 2006.
Peace and anti-crime activist Maria Guadalupe Vicencio wore a skirt made of a Mexican flag splattered with fake blood. The names of three disappeared activists from her violence-plagued home state of Tamaulipas were written across her shirt.
Vicencio said the students’ movement “sets an example for all Mexicans to wake up, and not be silent.”
In a meeting with the parents of the 43 missing students earlier this week, President Enrique Pena Nieto promised to create a special prosecutors’ office to investigate all of Mexico’s disappearances.
More than 25,000 people disappeared in Mexico between 2007 and July 31, 2015, according to the government. Unidentified bodies often turn up in clandestine graves of the kind used by drug gangs to dispose of victims. But most people disappear without a trace.
The 43 students from a radical teachers college disappeared on Sept. 26, 2014, after a clash with police in Iguala, a city in the southern state of Guerrero. Six other people were killed at the hands of the police during the disturbances.