More than 1,000 people took to the streets of Guadalajara to mark four months since the forced disappearance of least 43 student protestors in the town of Iguala, Guerrero state. Demonstrators took up the familiar cry of “They took them alive! We want them back alive!” as they marched down Avenida Juarez on Monday, January 26.
At least 12 other countries had similar protests.
President Enrique Peña Nieto urged citizens to look to the future.
“I am convinced that this moment in Mexico’s history of sorrow, tragedy, and pain, should not leave us trapped. We cannot stay there,” Peña Nieto said.
The following day, the government announced that the case was closed. Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam repeated the government’s contention that the students were kidnapped by local police and then handed over to a criminal gang, the Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors), who killed them and incinerated their bodies.
Karam placed emphasis on the testimony of one of the captured cartel hitmen, who claims that he massacred the unarmed group because he viewed the student’s presence in Iguala as an aggression.
“The students were mistakenly identified as being members of an antagonistic criminal gang in the area,” Karam declared. “That is the reason why they were deprived of their liberty and then their lives.”
Early reports suggested that Mayor José Luis Abarca ordered the attack to stop the group from disrupting an event that his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, hoped would kick-start her own political career.
The story was initially pushed by the government and gained ground as both the mayor and his wife have a reputation for violence.
Abarca was accused of murdering a local activist in 2013, while Pineda has family ties to the Guerrero Unidos and once threatened to cut off a reporter’s ears.
Yet the focus has moved away from the speech and the government now claims Abarca was working to protect the interests of the local gang and not just the political ambitions of his wife.
Some researchers have argued that the federal police and army were directly involved in the violence.
Suspects in custody said they burned the students’ bodies on a huge bonfire built from logs and gasoline. Yet a joint scientific study by two Mexico City universities concluded that it was impossible that the students were incinerated in the open air, as such a fire would have required 33 tons of wood and would have generated plumes of smoke visible for miles.
Karam categorically denied the army were involved in the incident or had any knowledge of the attack.