Amid pouring rain, Luz María Telumbre traveled to Mexico City from her home in Guerrero, marking the tenth anniversary of what she calls the darkest night of her life. Her son, Cristian Alfonso, should be nearing his 30th birthday, yet she holds onto an image of him, forever 19. Cristian was one of the 43 student teachers abducted by Mexican police while en route to an annual protest in the capital, having traveled from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college, a school renowned for its political activism.
The students vanished in Iguala, with the last sighting documented by security cameras showing them face down in the back of police trucks as they were taken out of the city. The full story behind the troubling connection between the state and the drug cartels in Guerrero—and its implication in the students’ abduction—remains largely unclear.
For the last decade, Luz María and the families of the other victims have rallied together, chanting, “Alive they took them, alive we want them back.” Their call is for authorities to shed light on what truly occurred that fateful night of September 26, 2014, take responsibility, and bring those accountable for the heinous crime to justice.
An initial investigation under former President Enrique Peña Nieto concluded that corrupt municipal police in Iguala, acting on orders from the local mayor, handed the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel. This version, referred to as “the historic truth,” claimed that the cartel killed the students and disposed of their bodies while federal police and military personnel were supposedly uninvolved. This narrative faced considerable skepticism; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights deemed the findings “scientifically impossible.”
Further investigations unveiled additional complexities. Journalist Anabel Hernández suggested an alternative theory, proposing that the buses commandeered by the students were covertly transporting heroin. She claimed that the Mexican army, working on behalf of drug traffickers, intercepted the shipment, resulting in the students’ deaths to eliminate potential witnesses.
As a presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to thoroughly investigate the case of the 43 missing students. Upon taking office, he established a “truth commission” to revisit the investigation, vowing to follow the evidence wherever it might lead. Several soldiers were arrested alongside former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, but most of those detained have since been released.
Last year, independent investigators abruptly left Mexico, citing a host of issues with state authorities, including a lack of information, secrecy, and hidden evidence. In February, the families of the missing students declared they would stop engaging with the commission due to their frustrations regarding the military’s lack of transparency.
Luz María firmly believes that López Obrador’s administration hindered the investigation as it began to focus on military involvement. “The investigation fell apart under Mr. López Obrador; he never provided us with answers,” she told the BBC as the march began. “Complications arose when we pointed out that the Mexican army was involved in the disappearance of our children, and he refused to pursue that line of inquiry,” she asserted.
Luz María is deeply concerned about the military’s growing influence within López Obrador’s administration, which has expanded into various state functions, from infrastructure projects to national security. “The army are criminals dressed up in military,” she stated bluntly.