A group of 43 disappeared students, whose exact fate remains unknown, are the most troubling symbol of violence that has scourged Mexico since the war on drugs began

Mexico in the drug war: 'A cemetery of bodies with no story, and stories with no body'

Mexico in the drug war: 'A cemetery of bodies with no story, and stories with no body'

On 26 September 2014, a group of students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in Guerrero – one of the poorest regions in Mexico – set out for the city of Iguala for a venture rooted in their long history of activism: they commandeered buses to take them to the capital city where they planned to join a march commemorating the massacre of scores of students by the Mexican army in 1968.

A few hours later, the buses were intercepted by a group of gunmen who hunted down the students and shot them in cold blood before disappearing their bodies. The massacre lasted for hours, and was carried out with the complicity – or the direct participation – of various state security forces in the zone.

Five years later, we still don’t know exactly what happened to the victims, nor what motives prompted that night of horror. The Mexican state – the state which should protect us all – was not only incapable of solving the case or putting those responsible on trial, but stubbornly insisted on doing the opposite: manipulating evidence and witnesses, inventing culprits, torturing suspects and leaving the investigation so tangled in confusion that the truth has never emerged.

Since then, the faces of those 43 students have become the most troubling symbol of the violence that has scourged my country since the launch of the war against drug-trafficking.

We Mexicans live in a cemetery full of bodies with no story, and stories with no body.

And among all the dead and the disappeared, Julio César Mondragón is perhaps the most terrifying symbol of this our age of lead: a classmate of the Ayotzinapa students, his body was found the day after their disappearance. He had been tortured and his face was skinned – either by his killers, or by wild animals after his death.

Nobody represents today’s Mexico better than him: a country which has lost its face – a country which is no longer able to recognize itself.

On 11 December 2006, just a few days after taking office, then-president Felipe Calderón ordered the Mexican army on to the streets, and – alongside the federal police – on to the frontline of the fight against narco-trafficking. Calderón made his first public comments on the new strategy the following month, using two words which would dramatically change Mexico: “crusade” and “war”.

The defeat of Calderón’s party in the 2012 elections can be seen as punishment for his drug war – one of the most irresponsible acts of any of our presidents. But if his successor Enrique Peña Nieto did away with such bellicose rhetoric, his strategy remained identical: a punitive blueprint which preserved the worse vices of the system. The frivolity and air of corruption around Peña Nieto’s administration became state policy and only contributed to the rising tide of violence.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Soldiers patrol outside the government palace in Culiacán, Sinaloa state, Mexico, on 18 October 2019. Photograph: Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images

Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018 can be seen as a rational response to Peña Nieto’s shamelessness. Amlo, as he is known, swept into power on a wave of popularity: his genuine connection with ordinary people, his reputation for personal rectitude and his effort to position himself alongside the least fortunate unleashed endless hope in one of the most unequal countries on the earth.

Sadly, once in power, he has betrayed most of his promises – including a pledge to return the army to its barracks, to establish a new system of transitional justice and guarantee the end of impunity.

Instead, the new government has preserved the punitive emphasis of its security policy with the creation of a new national guard, which although in theory is a civil force is composed of and directed by the military. This new security force now concentrates on stopping migrants at the country’s southern border, as the government has forgotten any of the integrated security strategies it called for while in opposition.

The result has been a new surge in violence: from 2006 until 2019, we’ve now reached some 250,000 deaths and 70,000 disappeared.

Such figures are comparable with those of a country in a state of civil war – perhaps because, without acknowledging it, that is what Mexico is today.

Together, the figures speak of more than two million families affected by violence. Millions of stories which our successive governments have obstinately downplayed, hidden or covered up. Millions of stories which will haunt Mexico until we dare to speak out and tell them.

Jorge Volpi is an award-winning Mexican novelist and writer known for his social and political critiques