It’s been six months since forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School went missing in the town of Iguala, in Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest and most violent states. In the indigenous communities of La Montaña and the Costa Chica, where many of the students lived, the disappearances are only one example of the crime, corruption, and impunity that plague the region. As Abel Barrera Hernàndez, a human-rights activist, said, “Here in the mountains . . . you live with the demons.”

This short film, based on the work of the photographer Matt Black, shows how families of the missing are coping with the still unexplained loss of their loved ones, and how citizens are struggling to protect themselves, and to preserve hope.

View a slide show of Matt Black’s photographs from Guerrero. Black’s reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

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