Protesters mark second year of missing Mexico students

By Nancy Caouette

MEXICO CITY

Thousands of demonstrators marched Monday in the center of Mexico City to mark the second anniversary of the disappearance of 43 teaching students from Ayotzinapa College.

The parents of the male students opened the march while holding pictures of their sons as protesters once again demanded justice for the group that vanished Sept. 26, 2014.

“We are still looking for them. We will keep on fighting for them until we find them. If there’s no peace for the people, there won’t have peace for the government,” said Lourdes Caballero Sanchez, sister of one of the missing students named Israel.

Students, teachers and union members of unions gathered on Mexico City’s main boulevard to support to the relatives of the disappeared students.

“We ask for the reappearance of the 43 missing students. Mexican citizens disprove [President] Enrique Pena Nieto and his administration who have done nothing seriously to find these young men,” said retired teacher Mariano Lopez.

“We will collapse this rotten government with your help," Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for the students’ families, told the crowd.

After two years, the whereabouts of the students who were attacked and kidnaped by local police in Iguala, Guerrero state, are still unknown.

According to the official version of events, the group of students were turned over to members of the Guerrero Unidos, or United Warriors, drug cartel who killed the group and then burned their bodies in a dump in Cocula, near Iguala.

But independent experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have rejected the government's findings, arguing that it was impossible to burn human beings in the dump.

The IACHR also denounced the use of torture against suspects during the government’s investigation.

While on a visit to Colombia to attend the signing of an historic peace agreement between the FARC and government there, Pena Nieto promised on Monday to “expand the investigation” in order to find justice for the victims.