Lest We Forget; It is 2nd Anniv. of Missing 43. Photo Essay

Posted by DD from material from NBC, Telesur, and partially republished from Huffington Post

A banner with the faces of the 43 missing students hangs in Tixtla, Guerrero, on Feb. 6, 2014. It reads, “Tixtla and El Fortín support the families of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students. They took them alive, we want them alive!”

Yesterday there were marches of human rights activist and protestors around the globe commemorating the 2nd anniversary of kidnapping and murder of students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in Guerrero state in Mexico.  

Some people say this is old news (the disappearances and subsequent investigation by the government)  and why do we continue to dwell on it.  They say we should just move on because we may never know that really happened and the students are only a tiny fraction of the total number of disappearances in Mexico over the last decade.

In answer to them, there are many reasons why we cannot allow the case of the 43 (as it has become known as) to just become a statistic and forgotten with the passage of time.   Can you imagine the uproar that would shake the world if 43 students from an American university were kidnapped and disappeared. 

The emergence of a social movement with international reach is one of the few positive developments in the Ayotzinapa case over the last two years. "We are all part of a system," said the Mexican Catholic priest and human rights activist Alejandro Solalinde during a lecture at Barnard College in Manhattan on May 5, 2015. "If we analyze reality as scattered elements we won't find answers… But if we interpret everything as part of a larger system, then we will understand what is going on."   Solalinde described Ayotzinapa as  X-rays of Mexican politics. 

Amado Tlatempa, cousin of two of the 43 missing students—Jesús Jovany Rodríguez Tlatempa and José Eduardo Bartolo Tlatempa—believes that Ayotzinapa has elevated the moral conscience of Mexico, and will give people the courage to fight for their rights.
There are many human rights cases we still don't know about. But Ayotzinapa has opened a road to justice," Tlatempa told NBC Latino. 

"The mass kidnapping was really about silencing protestors, silencing an entire group of people, who are exposing what the government is doing bad," said Silvia García, a native from Mexico City marching in New York yesterday.

While the case of the missing "43" was at the heart of a march on Mexican Independence Day that the protestors were calling for the resignation of President Pena Nieto was not successful in getting him to resign, the lead investigator for the case in the Federal Attorney Generals office did resign this week.  Most commentators believe his resignation was the result of the embarrassment to the EPN administration over the now totally debunked government investigation.  (But as is typical in Mexican politics, within hours of his departure from the A/G's office he was appointed by EPN as an advisor to the National Security Council reporting directly to the President).

Keeping a light shined on the case of the 43 has not only resulted in the creation of a social movement, it has allowed other facts to emerge that further debunks the government version of events.

Accusations of torture, tampering with evidence, and a concerted government cover-up have also swirled around authorities.Telesur raises some interesting questions that have not been answered by the government.

"Mexican security forces managed to capture the world’s most-wanted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman months after he escaped from high-security prison for the second time, but two years after 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher’s college went missing, authorities have failed to corner the cartel boss known as “El Caminante,” who played a leading role in the kidnapping and enforced disappearance of the students.

" According to an independent group of experts from the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, local police in the town of Iguala alked on the phone with El Caminante at “critical times” throughout the night that the 43 youths disappeared from buses they had commandeered to attend a protest in Mexico City.

" An analysis of telephone calls conducted throughout the night by local police in Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula, near the garbage dump where the government controversially claims the 43 students were incinerated, revealed some telling clues.

 "First, although Iguala police — who prosecutors accuse of kidnapping the students and handing them over to the local gang Guerreros Unidos to kill and burn in the dump — claim that they were in the police headquarters in the early hours of Sept. 27, 2014, phone records reveal at least three officers were out on patrol during critical hours in the case. GIEI experts questioned why government investigators have not addressed this inconsistency.

"Additionally, telephone records of Guerreros Unidos' gang members showed that their movements on the night of the disappearance did not match the alibis they provided in police statements. For example, one defendant claims that he was in the Cocula garbage dump — the most contested aspect of the government’s story — on the night of the kidnapping but his phone records suggest otherwise.

"Third, phone data analyzed by the GIEI show that at least two dozen police officer from Iguala Cocula were in contact with Guerreros Unidos member El Caminante during the night of Sept. 26 and early morning of Sept. 27. At least three Iguala officers communicated with El Caminante during what experts called “critical times during the chase and detention of the students.” Chief Fausto Bruno Heredia placed no fewer than 10 calls to El Caminante between 10:16 p.m. and 4:32 a.m. local time, which would suggest a high-level of coordination.

Critics of the state's official version of the events have noted that El Caminante's disappearance is convenient for a government that is widely believed to be complicit in the disappearance and likely murder of the 43 students.

Prosecutors have arrested more than 100 people in connection with the case, but convicted none. Dozens of the key witnesses upon whom the government based its claims were tortured, casting doubt on the reliability of their statements and likely making them inadmissible in a courtroom

Ayotzinapa has become an emblem of what many regard as government impunity and state collusion with criminal groups that has led to either the murder or disappearance of nearly 28,000 people since Mexico declared its war on drugs 12 years ago.

The persistence determination of the families of the missing 43 has been the leading force behind keeping the light shined on their disappearance.  The following is a photo essay republished from Huffington Post of what the search for the missing 43 looks like.

 Roque Planas National Reporter for The Huffington Post.

The family of missing student Julio César López Patolzin celebrates his 25th birthday on Jan. 29, 2015. His aunt and niece hold each other as a group of musicians play his favorite songs. 

When the news broke that Mexican police had attacked a group of students from a teachers college and abducted 43 of them on Sept. 26, 2014, photojournalist Emily Pederson was living in the southern Mexican city of Chiapas.

Though she was 300 miles away from Iguala, where the students were attacked, the case resonated with her. She kept seeing images of the students’ faces plastered on city walls as their disappearance became a symbol of impunity and drug war-fueled violence in Mexico.

“I witnessed the ramifications, even on people who were totally unconnected to the case,” Pederson told The WorldPost. “So eventually, I went to the school where they studied in Guerrero. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find there.”

What she found was a social movement centered around the families of the missing. Pederson spent the next two months with them, following them to meetings, traveling with them in a caravan to California and “just doing a lot of listening.”

Monday will mark the second year since the Ayotzinapa Normal School students were abducted. Their disappearance has become the highest-profile human rights case in a country where the government has a long history of “accusing innocent people to protect guilty ones,” in the words of investigative journalist Anabel Hernández.

One image Pederson views as emblematic of that legacy is a shot depicting three of the Ayotzinapa students above a poster of people disappeared during Mexico’s “dirty war” of the 1960s through 1980s.  

“A lot people really felt that connection,” Pederson said. “It was really felt as the latest in the long succession of not only a terrible drug war crime and tragedy, but a very highly charged political crime… The fact that this has been [the students’] fate is so representative of the whole trajectory of Mexican history up to this point.”

Drawings of Julio César Ramírez, Daniel Solís and Julio César Mondragón, the three Ayotzinapa students who were murdered during the Iguala attacks, on a poster at the Ayotzinapa Normal School on March 15, 2015. Below them, a poster shows images of Mexicans who disappeared during the “dirty war,” a period of intense state repression, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions between the 1960s and the 1980s. 

The Enrique Peña Nieto administration continues to cling to a thoroughly discredited account of what happened the night the students were attacked. Prosecutors have arrested more than 100 people in connection with the case, but convicted none. Dozens of the key witnesses upon whom the government based its claims were tortured, casting doubt on the reliability of their statements and likely making them inadmissible in a courtroom.

Independent journalists, a team of forensic specialists and two hefty reports by a group of experts fielded by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights all conclude that physical evidence contradicts the government’s version of events.

 Below are some of Pederson’s photos from her time with the families of the missing students. She is also working on a short film called “They Took Them Alive,” scheduled for release within the next two weeks. The film’s title is a nod to a chant yelled by family members and their supporters at demonstrations: “They took them alive, and alive we want them back.”

Posters of the 43 missing students cover the base of a statue in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, on March 5, 2015.

A citizen search organized by families of the missing students in the hills outside Iguala, Guerrero, on Jan. 16, 2015.

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Site of the attacks in the city of Iguala, Guerrero. Crosses on the ground mark where two Ayotzinapa students were shot. Parents of the missing students have posted phone numbers to call “if you know anything about our sons.” Feb. 13, 2015.

Epifanio Álvarez Carbajal and Blanca Luz Nava Vélez, parents of missing Ayotzinapa student Jorge Álvarez Nava, rest on the bus during a week of marching and organizing in Mexico City on Jan. 24, 2015.

Students comfort mothers of the 43 missing students at a rally at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City on Jan. 23, 2015.

The number “43” lights up a family’s rooftop in Tixtla, Guerrero, on Feb. 1, 2015. Tixtla is home to the Ayotzinapa Normal School and 14 of its missing students.

Student survivors of the Iguala attacks and disappearances sit in the auditorium of the Ayotzinapa Normal School on March 16, 2015.

Bus stop at the Ayotzinapa Normal School. Grafitti on the structure reads, “Our protest is not violent, it is a political response to the poverty, exploitation and violence generated by the government.”

DD:  We cannot allow the memory of the 43 to end up like this.

All the photos shown here are from Emily Pederson collection.  More can be seen on Huffington Post.  She is also working on a short film called “They Took Them Alive,” scheduled for release within the next two weeks.