Photo @SIPAZ

33 months after the forced disappearance of 43 student teachers from the Raul Isidro Burgos Normal School and the murder of 6 others, their families continue to travel the country in their search and to demand justice. Since June 18th, they started a caravan in the South-Southeast of the Republic. The caravan started in Campeche and will pass through five states: Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Chiapas.

The aim of this caravan is that more than a thousand days after the attack on the student teachers, “in every corner of Mexico, it is known that the Mexican State, while still hiding the truth, is responsible, and that it not be forgotten”, said Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for relatives.

Relatives and friends of the victims as well as other students are asking the government to follow the four lines of investigation identified by the group of independent experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which, they are sure, will lead to the truth about what happened. The first request is to investigate the elements of the Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA in its Spanish acronym), who were, they propose, directly involved in the events. The other is the drug raid that was supposed to be the motive for the disappearance, as the young people allegedly had taken a bus loaded with drugs and money. The third is the detention of the federal and municipal police of Huitzuco, Guerrero, who took the 25 young people, because it has not been determined who is the “boss” who ordered their disappearance. The last line of research is cell phones. According to Aristegui Noticias, during their journey, participants were arrested by a patrol and violently taken off the bus on which they were traveling at the point of high-caliber guns, because they had passed a toll booth without paying: “It does not fit with disappearing our children, today they harass repress us for looking for them”, they said.

For more information in Spanish:

Caso Ayotzinapa fue un crimen de Estado (La Jornada Maya, 26 de junio de 2017)

Ciudadanía se une a la marcha por Ayotzinapa de la caravana del sureste en Chetumal (Proceso, 25 de junio de 2017)

A punta de pistola, bajan de autobús a padres de Ayotzinapa (Aristegui Noticias, a 18 de junio de 2017)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Guerrero/ Nacional: Madres y padres de los 43 consideran no acudir a la reunión con la PGR y la CIDH (20 de abril de 2017)

Guerrero : padres de los 43 participan en audiencia de la CIDH (22 de marzo de 2017)