Ten years after the crime of forced disappearance of the 43 teaching training college students of Ayotzinapa, thousands of people joined the mothers and fathers of the 43 [disappeared and other] students in their demand for truth and justice in the streets of Mexico City. Throughout the march and at the rally in the capital’s Zócalo [main central plaza], there were strong expressions of anger and denunciation against the current government for covering up the role of the Army in this state crime committed by the previous government of Enrique Peña Nieto on the night of September 26, 2014. Evidence shows that the Army, federal, state, ministerial, and municipal police participated in a joint operation with the criminal group Guerreros Unidos to carry out the forced disappearance of the 43 students, as well as the murder of three students and three other people, in addition to dozens of people wounded by police bullets.

The demand for truth and justice also resonated in [significant] protests in states such as Puebla, Oaxaca, Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Chiapas, and Morelos, as well as in California [in the] United States.

In Mexico City, thousands of people marched despite the rain that fell during almost the entire route. There were perhaps more than 35,000 people, and in any case more than the figure of 10,000 according to the government, which tried to minimize the march, in addition to denigrating it. The march was characterized above all by the enthusiasm of thousands of young people, among them students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM), the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), the Ibero-American University, the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), and others. They carried banners and posters with a variety of signs and slogans, such as “It Was the State,” “We Are Missing 43 and Thousands More,” a face of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) with the word “Farsante” [Defrauder]. The students from Ayotzinapa carried three [cardboard] tombstones to remember their three companions murdered on that dark night in Iguala. And slogans resounded loudly all along the way: “You took them alive, return them alive!” “Now, now, it is essential to return them alive, and to punish the guilty"; and the crowd chanted from 1 to 43 followed by the cry “¡Justice!” with fists in the air.

The fact that 10 years [have gone by] without truth or justice motivated the massive participation of the people, encouraged by the persistent struggle of the parents of the 43, as well as their advisors, lawyers and the Ayotzinapa students. This struggle for 10 years has managed to [prove] with scientific evidence, especially through the investigation of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), the [clear]  participation of the Army in coordination with the police at different levels of government and the criminal group Guerreros Unidos in the forced disappearance of the 43 [Ayotzinapa] students.

Since September 23, committees of mothers and fathers, advisors and family members have [gone to] Mexico City, [to] various universities and elsewhere, where they [have] emphatically [shown] that there is scientific evidence of the participation of the Army, the police and organized crime, and that AMLO is covering up for the Army by hiding more documentary evidence [which is] in the hands of the Army and other state institutions. And that is the cold truth. Instead of pursuing the guilty parties (which include the highest levels of the Army and the previous government), he launches snarky attacks and tries to discredit the victims, the mothers and fathers, as well as their advisors and the people in solidarity.

And this was again [denounced] at the rally in the Zócalo at the end of the march: “Andrés Manuel López Obrador… turned his back on the Ayotzinapa case so as to protect the Army. He will be seen as an accomplice of those people who made our children disappear. It has been 10 years that we have walked despite everything… There is evidence, there are reports that demonstrate the participation of the military… We demand that the missing pages be handed over, containing all the information about what happened that night. We also ask for the return of the Group of Experts [GIEI] because they are the only ones who have led us to the truth. Thanks to the Group of Experts we have walked a little towards the truth, we want them to return…” This was the statement, demand and claim by Hilda Legideño, mother of Jorge Antonio Tizapa Legideño, one of the 43 [disappeared Ayotzinapa students].

And it is important to understand more deeply: Why do they cover up their criminal Army? “Because the Army is the most important repressive force of the State. By revealing its criminal role, in collusion with organized crime, the State is exposed as it is: an apparatus of domination, oppression and criminal repression against the oppressed and the people as a whole [to] maintain this capitalist system of exploitation and oppression.” (From the leaflet “Ayotzinapa: sigue la impunidad y el encubrimiento del papel criminal del Ejército. Hace falta una revolución real que abra paso a una nueva forma de vivir” [Ayotzinapa: The Impunity And the Cover-Up of the Criminal Role of the Army Continue. A Real Revolution Is Needed to Open the Way to a New Way of Living], by the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico [OCR, M]. Available in Spanish at aurora-roja.blogspot.com).

And once again they put up surrounding high metal walls to “protect” the National Palace [center of Mexico’s Executive Branch], the [main Catholic] Cathedral and the access to the Zócalo. They also placed large heavy concrete blocks at the accesses to hinder the arrival of the march. Obstacles like these concrete blocks had never been seen before. “They dared to block our way,” says Cristina Bautista, mother of Benjamín Ascencio Bautista. But the obstacles could not stop the courage of the sea of ​​people who passed one by one through a gap or simply jumped over them. 

Mario González, father of César Manuel González, demands from President López Obrador: “These 43 parents are not going to be stopped by these blocks. If we have to jump over them, we will jump over them with all these people in solidarity who have accompanied us, whom you yourself have defrauded by putting these blocks so that they cannot get through. The march is peaceful, these people want to walk with the 43 parents. For ten years no authority has been able to give them justice.”

And he asks: “I don’t know what fear they had that the march in its entirety might reach the Zócalo. Where is that democracy preached by this government that calls itself humanist?” That democracy, he says, “they only use this when it suits them, when they want something in their favor. But for us this does not exist.”

And the truth is that the “democracy” of capitalism is at most for those at the top, the rich and powerful, the big Mexican and foreign capitalists, as well as the political representatives of their system. There is no democracy for the people but rather the use of force by the capitalist State against the people. So they hide the dirty hand of the Army in Ayotzinapa and leave hundreds of thousands of cases of murders and disappearances in almost complete impunity. They say that “we do not repress” while the police of the Morena [the current political party in control of the federal government] governments kill the Ayotzinapa student Yanqui Kothan Gómez Peralta in Guerrero, [and] two peasants protesting the hoarding and contamination of water by Granjas Carroll in Veracruz; they brutalize and imprison defenders of indigenous people in Mexico City. Enough is enough! This capitalist State which treats the people viciously [must be overthrown], and a new revolutionary power must be established that serves the people through revolution!

The metal and concrete walls are the expression of [the] continuing [ferocious] cover-up [of] their capitalist State and its repressive armed forces, in the face of indignation, anger and collective creativity that fights to know the truth and punish the criminals, not only in the Ayotzinapa case, but in thousands of other cases of the disappeared, thousands more murdered, thousands more people forcibly displaced from their territories, and so many other crimes of the capitalist system and the State that protects it.

On the very morning of September 26, AMLO again attacks the victims, the parents, their advisors, and the people in solidarity with lies so blatant that they would be laughable, if they did not represent the threat of new repression by the State: “With the passage of time this has become a conservative movement, with political purposes closely linked to the right, to the PAN [a political party]. Even Zapatismo, now every time there is a questioning of Zapatismo it is against us. The Agustín Pro center [human rights group] is the same, and other organizations.”

This is how he tries to justify the cover-up of the Army’s role, the blow in 2022 to destroy the serious investigation carried out by the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case (UEILCA), and the lies to absolve the Army and consolidate the “Olive Green Truth” (in the apt phrase by columnist Julio Hernández López, Astillero). He insists again and again that there is no evidence against the Army, when there is a lot, and he tries to reduce it all to the criminal group Guerreros Unidos and some corrupt local authorities, similar in this respect to the “Historical Truth” of the Peña Nieto government, fabricated from tortures, as John Gibler points out in a recent article (“La ‘Verdad Histérica’: López Obrador y el caso Ayotzinapa” [The “Hysterical Truth:” López Obrador and the Ayotzinapa case], at adondevanlosdesaparecidos.org).

The following should be noted: “The same viciousness with which AMLO has attacked people who fight for truth and justice demonstrates the extreme need to cover up the truth about this horrendous crime, because it reveals the putrefaction of this criminal capitalist State up to the highest levels of government. If the whole truth were revealed, many more would conclude that this State and the violence it exercises are completely illegitimate.” “Ayotzinapa is just one of more than one hundred thousand cases of disappearances that successive governments have kept in almost total impunity. But even if it were the only crime of the current system, the criminal joint operation of the Army, other State forces and Guerreros Unidos, and the subsequent cover-ups with the ‘Historical Truth’ and the ‘Olive Green Truth,’ would be more than enough to underline the urgent need for a real revolution to overthrow this capitalist State that represses the people.” (From the book Ayotzinapa: Faro de lucha contra el Estado criminal y la necesidad de una revolución real [Ayotzinapa: Beacon of Struggle Against the Criminal State And the Need for a Real Revolution] by the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico. Available for sale and free in digital form in Spanish at aurora-roja.blogspot.com).

When the march finally reached the Zócalo, jubilation erupted when a large sinister figure of a soldier standing on skulls, artistically made of paper, representing those guilty of disappearing the 43 [Ayotzinapa students], was set on fire. The students threw some firecrackers over the high metal fences that protect the center of lies, betrayal and repression, the National Palace.

At the end of the rally in the Zócalo, the parents of the 43 thanked all the people who have supported the struggle and stressed that the struggle will continue to find out the truth and punish all those responsible.

Truth and Justice NOW for Ayotzinapa and ALL the Disappeared and Murdered People!

It Was the State! The Government Is Covering Up the Criminal Army!

[We Are Fighting] for Revolution and a New and Much Better Way of Living!

Aurora Roja

Voice of the 

Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

auroraroja.mx@gmail.com | aurora-roja.blogspot.com