MEXICO: "It Was the State"

Political scientist Alberto Díaz-Cayeros defines the role of the Mexican State in the disappearance of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa.

On September 26, 2014, more than 100 students from a rural teachers training college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, boarded a caravan of buses headed toward the town of Iguala to protest discriminatory hiring and funding practices in schools. Forty-nine of the young men never made it home. Local police intercepted the buses and a shootout ensued. Six students died at the scene and 43 were kidnapped. The fate of only one of those 43 students is known for sure, with his bone fragments identified from a pile of ash that the government claims are the charred remains of all the students.