Twelve Years of Marching, and Still the Military Says Nothing

Twelve years is long enough for a child to become an adult, for a wound to become a scar, for a question to harden into something closer to an accusation. In Mexico City on Saturday, thousands marched from the Angel of Independence to the National Palace, carrying photographs of 43 young men who disappeared on a September night in 2014 and who have not been seen since. The mothers and fathers who led the march are no longer asking whether the military was involved. They are asking why the government will not say so plainly.

The students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teacher-Training College in Ayotzinapa were in Iguala, Guerrero, on September 26, 2014, to commandeer buses for a rally in Mexico City. Municipal police allegedly attacked the buses, and by the end of that night, six people were dead and 43 students had vanished. The administration of then-President Enrique Peña Nieto initially claimed that the students had been handed over to a local organized crime group, Guerreros Unidos, and that their bodies were burned at a garbage dump in Cocula. Independent international experts disproved that theory as scientifically impossible, and a 2018 federal court ruling found that the confessions used to construct it were obtained by torture.

"Everything points to the military," said Maria de Jesus Tlatempa, mother of José Eduardo Bartolo Tlatempa, one of the 43. "Up to this day, we don't really know what happened to our sons." The families have maintained for years that military intelligence documents from 2014 could answer fundamental questions about the students' fate. A February 2026 judicial ruling ordered the Defense Ministry to hand over 853 folios from the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center in Iguala, but the military has not complied, and has filed an appeal against the order.

The families took their demand to the Supreme Court on September 25, meeting with Justice Hugo Aguilar Ortiz to request that the court review the amparo resources related to the case and press for the release of the military documents. They also asked the court to examine the 2018 ruling that dismantled the "historical truth" and ordered the creation of a commission to investigate the events. Isidoro Vicario, the families' lawyer, said the military's refusal to hand over the documents constitutes a continuing obstruction of the right to truth.

President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Friday that her government would issue an update on the investigation on Monday, the anniversary of the disappearances. Her administration arrested former Guerrero Governor Ángel Aguirre in August, charging him with obstruction of justice and forced disappearances, and is seeking the extradition of two suspects from the United States, including a former judge who obtained political asylum. But for the families, the arrests, while welcome, do not address the central question of the military's role.

At the National Human Rights Commission earlier in the week, families protested a recommendation they say absolves the army of responsibility. "At nearly 12 years, the president of the National Human Rights Commission cannot deceive us with that recommendation," Vicario said, citing six reports from the Group of Independent Experts that he said contain "contundent information" about the military's participation. Hilda Hernández Rivera, mother of student César Manuel, said the commission "has violated the human rights of both our children and ourselves."

The march itself was both a commemoration and a demand. Students from rural teacher-training colleges joined the families, painting slogans on the pavement: "CNDH protector of the Army," "We are missing 43," "Ayotzinapa lives." Rodrigo, a 22-year-old student who gave only his first name for fear of being targeted, told CBC News that the movement would not stop "until we find our 43 disappeared comrades."

What the families seek is not complicated, though it has proven extraordinarily difficult to obtain: the documents that the military holds, the full account of what happened on that September night, and the truth about where the 43 students were taken. After 12 years, those questions remain unanswered, and the march from the Angel of Independence to the National Palace is a reminder that for the families, time has not diminished the demand for an answer.

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Sources: CBC News, La Jornada, Debate, Tlachinollan, Vanguardia