On September 26, 2014, forty-three male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College disappeared after being forcibly abducted in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, in what has been called one of Mexico's most infamous human rights cases. They were allegedly taken into custody by local policemen from Iguala and Cocula in collusion with organized crime, with later evidence implicating the Mexican Army. Officials have concluded there is no indication the students are alive, but as of 2025, only three students' remains have been identified and their deaths confirmed.
While tens of thousands have gone missing during the Mexican drug war, the 43 missing have become a cause célèbre due to the persistent activism and demands for an explanation by their parents and relatives. Official obstacles put in the way of independent investigations of the case have also provoked social unrest and international protests including protests leading to the resignation of the governor of Guerrero.
The students were preparing to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, following a tradition where they commandeered several buses to travel to Mexico City. The police set up roadblocks and fired weapons to intercept the students, but what happened during and after the stopping of their buses remains unclear. Among the many explanations for the students' disappearance include that the buses hijacked by the students contained drug cartel products or that a rival cartel had infiltrated the student group.
An early investigation—dubbed "the historic truth"—under Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam of the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, concluded corrupt municipal police from Iguala and neighboring towns, following orders from the local mayor, had turned 43 of the students over to the local drug cartel, Guerreros Unidos ("United Warriors"), who killed the students and destroyed their remains, and that Federal police and military played no part in the killings. This was disputed by some experts, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), who found the findings "scientifically impossible". Another investigation (by journalist Anabel Hernández) alleged that the commandeered buses were transporting heroin, without the students' knowledge, and the Mexican Army intercepted the drugs on behalf of the traffickers—the students being killed to eliminate witnesses. There are also reports of military personnel monitoring the students' situation but refraining from helping them.
After President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to office in 2018, he announced that a "truth commission" would lead a new investigation regardless of where the investigation led. The investigation led to the arrest of a dozen soldiers and a former attorney general, but the army and navy continued to hide information, and on 21 February 2024 parents of missing students announced they would cease dialogue with the commission.
Among those incarcerated in connection for the crime as of early 2024 are the leader of the United Warriors cartel José Ángel Casarrubias Salgado, known as "El Mochomo" (sentenced to life in prison in the U.S.), and former federal attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam (under house arrest in Mexico City as of early 2024).
Background
The Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Tixtla, Guerrero, Mexico, founded in 1926, is an all-male school that has historically been associated with student activism. Guerrero teachers, including the students from Ayotzinapa, are known for their "militant and radical protests that often involve hijacking buses and delivery trucks." The appropriation of vehicles was, according to the students, routine and temporary, and according to other sources, such as The New York Times, "largely tolerated" by bus companies of the vicinity. Most of the buses are usually returned after the protests conclude. However, it was not always popular with the public as it would leave passengers of the commandeered buses stranded.
Law enforcement generally tolerated this tactic despite frequent complaints from owners and transport users. Although federal agents have tended not to actively confront students for the appropriation of buses, the practice puts students and teachers at odds with local officials. Other protest tactics used by the students include throwing rocks at police officers, property theft, road blockings, and taking over toll booths to demand payment.
Local authorities in Guerrero tend to be wary of student protests because of historic and suspected ties with leftist guerrillas or rival political groups (see Mexican Dirty War). In 1995, the Guerrero state police killed seventeen farmers and injured twenty-one others during a protest in an event known as the Aguas Blancas massacre. The massacre led to the creation of the Popular Revolutionary Army (Spanish: Ejército Popular Revolucionario), which is believed by some state officials to retain some political influence in Guerrero. Students claim to have no ties with such groups, and that the only thing they have in common with them is socialist ideology. In addition, in Guerrero, where the bus companies are assumed to pay protection money, student campaigns are seen as threatening to organized crime.
In December 2011, two students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College of Ayotzinapa were gunned down and killed by the Guerrero state police during a rally on the Cuernavaca to Acapulco federal highway.
Large numbers of missing and presumed dead
According to Alma Guillermoprieto of The New Yorker magazine, Stefanie Eschenbacher of Reuters news service, and a number of other sources, tens of thousands of people in Mexico have gone missing since 2006, a problem that started with a wave of violence unleashed by the "War on Drugs" declared by President Felipe Calderón and his mobilising of the Mexican armed forces to fight organized drug traffickers. While this led to the arrest of high-level cartel leaders, rather than decapitating the drug networks, it led to a surge in violence as lower-level chiefs competed to replace former bosses. Rather than introducing an incorruptible security force to replace corrupt local police, it led to the corruption of the military.
Eschenbacher states that the interior ministry's official database registered 111,896 people as missing as of October 2023, while Guillermoprieto gave a "low-range official estimate" of 80,000 disappeared from 2006 to early 2024. The U.N. Committee on Enforced Disappearances called the large number of disappeared and very small number of investigations of the disappearances "alarming", and expressed disapproval of the "almost absolute impunity" of kidnappers and killers of the disappeared.
In February 2013, President Enrique Peña Nieto published an education bill in the Official Journal of the Federation in agreement with the pact signed by the three main political parties, Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), National Action Party (PAN) and Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), named Pact for Mexico. The bill aimed to reform Mexican public education, introducing a competitive process for the hiring, promotion, recognition, and tenure of teachers, principals, and administrators and declared that all previous appointments that did not conform to the procedures were null. Some teachers opposed the bill, claiming standardized tests that do not take in account the socio-economic differences between urban and under-equipped rural schools would affect students and teachers from economically depressed regions such as Guerrero.
In May 2013, teachers belonging to the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) union began rallies and strikes across Mexico, protesting in the Zócalo of Mexico City in a sit-in against the Reform and the bill of secondary laws. Students of the Rural Teachers College of Ayotzinapa joined the protest against the reform. In September 2013, the police retook the Zócalo square using water cannons and tear gas.
Business organizations of Baja California, Estado de Mexico, and Chiapas demanded decisive action against teachers on strike, as well as politicians from the PRD and PAN, and academics. In October 2013, three teachers protesting against the Education Reform suffered head injuries and a broken arm after being pelted with stones. The attack was blamed on the inhabitants of the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City, although teachers blamed the Federal Government.
In January 2014, the governor of the State of Mexico, Eruviel Ávila Villegas, sent a bill to the local Congress proposing to sanction those teachers who were actively protesting and not attending their jobs with fines and jail time. In August 2014, journalist Carlos Loret de Mola claimed to have heard a person in a meeting with President Peña Nieto saying "we're going to beat the hell out of the CNTE guys" ("Les vamos a partir la madre a los de la CNTE").
Attacks
On September 26, 2014, at approximately 6:00 p.m. (CST), more than 100 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Tixtla, Guerrero, traveled to Iguala, Guerrero, to interrupt a DIF conference presented by María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, then-first lady of Iguala, and following that to hijack buses for an upcoming march in Mexico City,
The students had previously attempted to make their way to the state capital Chilpancingo, but state and federal authorities blocked the routes there. In Iguala, the students had plans to solicit transportation costs to Mexico City, approximately 295 km away, for the anniversary march of the 1968 student massacre in Tlatelolco. However, on their way there, the students were intercepted by the Iguala municipal police force at around 9:30 pm, reportedly on orders of the mayor.
The details of what followed during the students' clash with the police vary. According to police reports, the police chased the students because they had hijacked three buses and attempted to drive them off to carry out the protests and then return to their college. Members of the student union, however, stated that they had been protesting and were hitchhiking when they clashed with the police. As the buses sped away and the chase ensued, the police opened fire on the vehicles. Two students were killed in one of the buses, while some fled into the surrounding hills. Roughly three hours later, escaped students returned to the scene to speak with reporters. In a related incident, unidentified gunmen fired at a bus carrying players from a local soccer team, which they may have mistaken for one of the buses that picked up the student protestors. Bullets struck the bus and hit two taxis. The bus driver, a football player, and a woman inside one of the taxis were killed. The next morning, the authorities discovered the corpse of a student, Julio César Mondragón, who had attempted to run away during gunfire. He was tortured before dying of brain injuries. In total, 6 people were killed and 25 wounded.
Kidnapping and killings
After the shootings, eyewitnesses said that students were rounded up and forced into police vehicles. Once in custody, the students were taken to the police station in Iguala and then handed over to the police in Cocula. Cocula deputy police chief César Nava González then ordered his subordinates to transport the students to a rural community known as Pueblo Viejo. At some point, while still alive, the students were handed over by the police to members of the Guerreros Unidos, a criminal organization in Guerrero which splintered from the Beltrán Leyva cartel. One of the trucks used to transport the students was owned by Gildardo "El Cabo Gil" López Astudillo, a high-ranking leader of the gang. "El Cabo Gil" then called Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, the top leader of Guerreros Unidos, and told him that the people he had in custody posed a threat to the gang's control of the area. Guerreros Unidos likely believed that some of the students were members of a rival gang known as Los Rojos. With that information, Casarrubias ordered his subordinates to kill the students. Investigators believe that a gang member known by his alias "El Chucky" or "El Choky" took part in the killings. He was suspected of collaborating with Francisco Salgado Valladares, one of Iguala's security chiefs, in kidnapping the students.
According to investigators, the students were taken to a dumpster in the outskirts of Cocula. After reaching the site it is likely that 15 students had died of suffocation and the other students were then killed by Patricio Reyes Landa, Jonathan Osorio Gómez and Agustín García Reyes. These three suspects then dumped the bodies in a pit, and some other suspects known only by their aliases burned the corpses with diesel, gasoline, tires, wood and plastic. They also destroyed the students' clothing in order to erase evidence. The fire most likely lasted from midnight until 2:00 or 3:00 pm. The gang assigned guards throughout the day to make sure that the fire was kept alive. When the fire had gone down, the suspects threw dirt in to cool the pit. They then placed the remains in eight plastic bags and dumped them in the San Juan river in Cocula, reportedly on orders from a man known only as "El Terco". "El Gil" then sent a text message to Casarrubias Salgado confirming the completion of the task. "We turned them into dust and threw their remains in the water. They [authorities] will never find them", the text read. Initially, 57 students were reported missing; fourteen of them, however, were located after it was found that they had returned to their families or had made it back safely to their college. The remaining 43 were still unaccounted for. Student activists accused authorities of illegally holding the missing students, but Guerrero authorities said that none of the students were in custody. Believing that the missing students had fled through the hills during the shootings, authorities deployed a helicopter to search for them. The 43 students, however, were never found.
Explanations for the disappearance
A number of theories have been proposed to explain the disappearance (and what was by 2023-4 assumed to be the killing) by a drug cartel of such a large number of unarmed civilians who were training to be teachers and had "nothing to do" with organized crime.
The history of left-wing activism and radicalism at the local teacher training college students attended aroused suspicion, but it is not clear that the students were targeted for their political beliefs. Some think that they angered Guerreros Unidos by refusing to pay extortion money. Another theory is that the buses hijacked by the students contained drug cartel products or that a rival cartel had infiltrated the student group. Others believe that there was a link between the students' disappearance and the influential wife of Iguala's mayor. On the day of the clashes, she was to give a speech to local dignitaries and
some believe the students were targeted because it was feared they could disrupt the event.