THERE will be protests today in Mexico and around the world to remember the fourth anniversary of the enforced disappearance of 43 students from the Aytozinapa teacher training college in the southern state of Guerrero.

The crime has gradually slipped from the international news without the fate of the young men ever having been established.
There was widespread public outrage in 2014, particularly at the role of security forces working with criminal gangs to attack and abduct the students. Yet the parents of the young men and their student colleagues continue to demand the truth about what really happened to them.

They also continue to demand that all those involved in carrying out and covering up the crime are brought to justice.

The new government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, takes office soon. This offers a vital opportunity to make real progress on the case. It is crucial that the international community supports the efforts of the families and keeps up pressure on the new Mexican authorities.

The anniversary of the 43 young men’s disappearance is closely followed by another key anniversary in Mexico’s recent history. On October 2, it will be 50 years since the 1968 Tlatelolco Square massacre when Mexico’s army was used to violently repress a student protest movement shortly before the Olympics.

That atrocity has scarred Mexico for half a century. The institutional protection of perpetrators reinforced a culture of impunity for those with political, economic and military power to avoid justice and cover-up abuses.

These practices played an important role in enabling organised crime to flourish and penetrate deep into the state and its institutions, fuelling Mexico’s descent into widespread violence. This has only been exacerbated since 2006 by the reliance of successive governments on the armed forces to pursue the “war on drugs.” In the last 12 years, this spiral of violence and impunity has left more than 200,000 dead and 30,000 disappeared, with no end in sight.

Clarifying the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43 is crucial for their families and their peers, but in addition it is vital for Mexico’s chances of breaking the cycle of violence.

This is because the case also represents the state’s unwillingness to fully investigate and hold to account all those implicated in serious crimes, including gross human rights violations. This attitude was nowhere more clearly expressed than by outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto. He recently insisted in valedictory media interviews on the truth of the findings of his government’s official enquiry. This had quickly concluded the young men had been killed mistakenly and their bodies burnt, that only local criminal gangs and corrupt municipal police already in detention were responsible. As such, the case was conveniently resolved.

However, the president ignored the fact that these findings have been discredited by a range of international investigators and forensic experts working with the various human rights bodies.

These experts also concluded the official enquiry had ignored other evidence pointing to the possibility of a wider criminal conspiracy, potentially involving the federal police and the armed forces.

Even an internal investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, itself later covered up, found senior official investigators had committed abuses such as torture and manipulated the enquiry. Yet the official identified as the primary architect of the misdirected investigation was not held to account but instead promoted within Peña Nieto’s government, suggesting reward for services rendered.

However, in June 2018, a Mexican federal court rejected the attempt to impose the government’s findings, concluding the official enquiry was not impartial, independent or exhaustive. It ordered the creation of an independent commission of investigation, including the involvement of relatives and international experts, to reinvestigate the case. The response of the present government has been to try to overturn the court’s order and resist a full investigation. All this points once again, as with the Tlatelolco massacre, to Mexican institutions and political elites working to ensure their control of judicial outcomes for political ends, rather than to establish truth and justice for victims and the wider society.

Yet despite this, there are some important factors which have the potential to change this approach. First, the relatives of the disappeared, after four years of relentlessly mobilising popular support for their cause in Mexico and around the world, continue in their struggle for justice and refuse to accept the present government’s handling of the case.

Second, the left-wing government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will take office on December 1. He has made commitments to the families that they can count on him to support their efforts to secure truth and justice. He also stated during his visit to the UK in 2017 that he would establish a Truth Commission for Ayotzinapa if he won the election.

However, he is liable to come under intense pressure not to reinvestigate the case from the political and military establishment. As a result, his administration’s support for a truly independent commission of enquiry, empowered with adequate resources, legal faculties and international expertise, to pursue an impartial and exhaustive investigation wherever the evidence leads, is essential if impunity and obfuscation are not to prevail.

The latter is what has happened in numerous cases of gross human rights violations since the Tlateloco massacre. Lopez Obrador has the opportunity, and soon the power, to make a radical break with the practices of impunity that have fed violence, corruption and denial of the rights for the majority of the population.

An effective investigation to credibly establish the fate of the 43 young men is not only essential for their grieving families but would also establish clear precedents and practices for investigating the 30,000 other disappeared, whose relatives clamour equally for truth and justice.

Justice Mexico Now, a UK-based NGO supporting the human rights initiatives in Mexico, along with many other civil society organisations in Europe and the rest of the world, continues to support the demands of the families of the disappeared for truth and justice. The international community has an important role to play in urging the new Mexican government to fully abide by its commitment to establish an independent commission of investigation to ensure truth and justice for the 43 disappeared young men and their families.

Such a step is essential if Mexico is to finally begin to escape the long shadow of impunity cast by the Tlatelolco student massacre and to build a just, safe and fair society for all.

Rupert Knox is on the board of Justice Mexico Now, and a doctoral student in the Department of Hispanic Studies at Sheffield University.