It's the biggest mystery and probably the biggest scandal to hit Mexico in the past decade. On September 26, 2014, in the southern town of Iguala, police officers fired on several buses carrying students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College. In the ensuing chaos, six people including three students were killed, while 43 other trainee teachers were taken away by the police, allegedly in cahoots with a local cartel. They were never seen alive again. Ten years on, the Mexican government and judicial system are unable to explain the tragedy. Our reporters Laurence Cuvillier, Matthieu Comin and Quentin Duval look back at this strange disappearance.
In Mexico, the families of the 43 students who disappeared 10 years ago have met a wall of silence. They continue to tirelessly demonstrate and demand progress in the investigation. The few meetings they have had with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have ended in frustrating failure. So far, only bone fragments of three students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College have been identified.
The Mexican authorities, who initially sought to minimise their responsibility, had at the time fabricated a "historic truth" – based on testimony obtained under torture – suggesting that the local police had colluded with organised crime, and claiming that the students were transporting drugs on the night of the events. But independent investigations have shown that this version was riddled with lies. The role of the army, garrisoned in the town of Iguala, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, has never been fully clarified.
The Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College has forged its identity around this tragedy, which still permeates the walls of the university, as we see in this report. Ten years on, the families and relatives of the 43 missing young men are gradually losing hope that they will one day know the truth about what really happened.
