Parents of 43 student teachers who went missing more than a month ago in southern Mexico emerged from a marathon meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto frustrated and angry at what they see as a lack of commitment to find their children.
“We told the president that we don’t trust his government,” Felipe de la Cruz told a press conference after the meeting, which lasted five hours. “It’s been more than 30 days and they still haven’t found our boys.”
The students, all young men, disappeared on September 26th after being attacked and arrested by police in Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, soon after they commandeered buses to use in a protest.
Government investigators say police handed the students over to a drug gang called Guerreros Unidos but, despite arresting 56 people allegedly involved, say they have yet to establish what happened.
The most visible efforts to find the missing 43 students have focused on the retrieval of dozens of bodies from mass graves in the Iguala area. Investigators say information given by detainees led them to the graves. None of the bodies have yet been identified as belonging to the students.
Authorities mounted a major operation this week to look for human remains in a municipal rubbish dump, though there has been little indication as yet of any significant finds.
“We are demanding that they don’t just look in graves and in dumps, because we are sure they are still alive,” Mr De la Cruz said, echoing the hope among parents.
Mr De la Cruz was one of five parents who spoke at the press conference while dozens more stood behind them, looking drained and stoney-faced, only breaking their silence to chant: “They took them alive, we want them alive.”
Some held banners with photographs of their missing children, who were all enrolled in the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college – one of the few routes out of poverty for the children of subsistence farmers, and known as a hotbed of radical left-wing activism.
The disappearance has sparked outrage across Mexico and concern abroad, challenging Mr Peña Nieto’s carefully crafted image as a modernising reformist.
After an initial week of near silence, the president makes statements almost daily promising his government will stop at nothing to find the students and bring those responsible to justice. Wednesday night’s meeting was the first time he met the parents.
"During nearly five hours, I had the opportunity to listen to their concerns, worries, as well as their pain," he said in an address to the nation. Mr Peña Nieto pledged "a renewed search plan". – (Guardian service)