Mexico’s president-elect meets with parents of 43 missing from Ayotzinapa

New interlocutor, same promises. Mexico will have a new government on October 1, but the commitment that the future president made on Monday, Claudia Sheinbaumwith the parents of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College who disappeared in 2014, is the same thing done by his predecessor when he came to power six years ago: to do everything possible to find them and clarify the case, something that has not happened until now.

“I promised to put all my will into continuing the search for truth, justice and finding their children,” Sheinbaum said on her social media after her first meeting with the families. “We are going to find a working method that allows us to do what they are asking for: truth, justice and where they are,” she insisted to the press after the meeting.

There were no further details of the meeting and the parents did not immediately comment, but frustration has been spreading among them for some time because after feeling deceived by the administration in which their children disappeared, that of Enrique Peña Nieto, they now feel betrayed by the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, six years ago, promised them the same thing that Sheinbaum promises today.

“There was important and significant progress” at the beginning of the government, acknowledged on Monday Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer who is accompanying the parents. “But when the investigation came to the Mexican Army, there was no will to continue,” he added.

Before their meeting with Sheinbaum, the parents met with López Obrador, although tension with his government has grown a lot in the last year due to the refusal of the Armed Forces to deliver hundreds of documents requested by their lawyers.

The president’s most recent statements attacking the representatives of the families of the missing students and exonerating the Army of any connection with events that his own government described as “state crimes” have contributed to the tensions.

The participation of the armed forces has been mentioned by the Attorney General’s Office, by the Truth Commission created at the beginning of this government and by the experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) who investigated the case for eight years.

Nearly 10 years after the attack on September 26, 2014 in the city of Iguala, in the southern state of Guerrero, many details remain unknown and neither the motive nor the fate of the students is clear, although charred remains of three of them have been found.

Authorities believe they were all killed by members of a heroin-trafficking cartel that acted in collusion with security forces and local, state and federal authorities, including the military.

There are dozens of people arrested in this case, others arrested were released due to errors in the process. No one has been sentenced for the disappearances.

Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam is the highest ranking person involved and is accused of obstruction of justice, torture and forced disappearance. A judge granted him house arrest in April due to his health condition and because he is over 75 years old.

There are also 16 military personnel accused, but most have been able to continue their trials in freedom.

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