Families hold march after expert group ends investigation into disappearance of college students

MEXICO CITY (CN) — Hopeless and alone. That’s how Joaquina García Velázquez described her emotional state after learning that an independent group of experts found it impossible to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of her son Martín Sánchez García and 42 other Ayotzinapa teachers’ college students in September 2014 in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.

Rain ticked a steady staccato rhythm onto tarps and raincoats as she spoke to a crowd of supporters and members of the media at the end of the 106th monthly march she and fellow families of the victims have held since their disappearance.

It was the first since the group of experts gave their final report Tuesday citing obstruction and obfuscation by the Mexican military and the federal government for their inability to arrive at the full truth of what happened to the 43 students. All evidence they were able to find, however, points to the army’s culpability.

“The group of experts was with us since 2015, we put our trust in them, and they proved to us that what they presented in their reports is reality,” said Hilda Legideño, mother of disappeared student Jorge Antonio Tizapa. “We’re virtually alone in this now, but we have to keep demanding justice.”

She expressed weariness at having received so much talk and so few results from the Mexican government, but said she believes that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has the will to fulfill his promise to find the truth.

“But up to now they haven’t shown us that they can tell us the truth,” she said, attributing that failure to the refusal of Mexico’s military institutions to divulge it.

Others said they felt López Obrador has no intention of keeping his promise, while some admitted to being utterly confused by a president who seems riddled with contradictions.

“It’s difficult to say whether or not he really wants to solve this mystery,” said Marcela, an activist involved in Mexico City’s feminist anti-monument movement who marched alongside families of the victims and preferred not to give her last name. “I suppose he did at one point. It would be infuriating to find that he never did.”

Her own feelings about the situation were likewise complex. She felt both anger at López Obrador’s turnaround on his stance on Mexico’s deepening militarization after winning the presidency and extreme sadness over the experts’ withdrawal from the case.

“It hurts both my body and soul,” she said. “It makes me think we’ll never see justice in this country, that impunity will continue to reign.”

López Obrador vowed Tuesday to continue the investigation in the wake of the expert group’s withdrawal from Mexico.

Security experts in Mexico may differ in their analyses of the federal government’s difficulty uncovering the truth, but they all agreed on one thing: the truth will not be revealed under the current administration.

Independent analyst David Saucedo views the situation as one in which López Obrador has a genuine intent to keep his promise to get at the truth but is hampered in that effort by a military apparatus determined to stop him.

“I think it will be very difficult for him to bend the military to his will on this issue,” Saucedo said. “He has been weak when requesting information from the military.”

Despite his opposition to the armed forces before becoming president, López Obrador regularly praises the integrity of Mexico’s military institutions, which he has tasked with several new jobs under his administration, from building and administering airports to constructing his flagship megaprojects like the Maya Train, to running an airline, hotels and other tourism ventures.

The military is the “guarantor" and “anchor” of these unorthodox assignments, Saucedo said, “and in exchange for this loyalty from the army, he has given them spaces of impunity, and the Ayotzinapa case is one of those spaces.”

Alberto Guerrero Baena, an independent security analyst based in Michoacán, believes López Obrador has no genuine desire to provide the victims’ family with the truth they demand.

“The president’s promises are without a doubt just a politician’s lip service,” he said.

Citing a Spanish phrase that translates to “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Guerrero said that had López Obrador really wanted to bring the truth to light, he would have done so by now.

“This discourse of wanting to help the families is one of several political discourses here in Mexico, because there has never been a real intention to help people in these situations,” he said. “In the end, we’re back where we started from.”

Despite the apparent lack of light at the end of the tunnel, the families vow to keep demanding to see proof of what they are convinced was a crime of the state. As several signs held aloft in the rain declared — and will declare again next month — “Ayotzinapa lives. The struggle continues.”

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