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Cristina Bautista Salvador, mother of Benjamín Ascencio Bautista.
Guerrero, Mexico //
What happened on Friday, Sept. 26, 2014, has become a symbol of the violence, impunity and broken rule of law that plagues Mexico. By the end of the night, six people were dead, and 43 of the students, last spotted being forced into police trucks, had vanished. Five years on, their whereabouts are still unknown, their cases unsolved.
They are now among the more than 40,000 other people in Mexico who are registered as disappeared, many in the country’s drug war.
This much is known: In one violent and chaotic night, local police officers, working with a criminal gang and the mayor, stopped and shot at the buses carrying the teacher-training students. Later, they fired at others also on their way out of town — taxis, and the soccer team’s bus — though they were not connected to the students. There is still no information about what exactly happened, why, who was involved or even where the students are.
A union representative, Alfredo Ramírez Garcia, was in a taxi leaving Iguala during the attack.
Inés Gallardo, mother of Daniel Solís Gallardo, one of the six people killed.
José Luis Hernández Rivera, former principal of the Ayotzinapa school, where missing and killed students were enrolled.
Nicanora García González, mother of Saúl Bruno García, abducted at 18.
Journalist Sergio Ocampo Arista filed some of the first photographs and dispatches about the attack.
Othokari González Agustín, then 17, was on the bus carrying a soccer team that was shot. His close friend was one of the six killed.
Emiliano Navarrete Victoriano, father of José “Pepe” Ángel Navarrete González.
Santiago Aguirre Espinosa, one of the lawyers for the families.
Guerrero, Mexico //
What happened on Friday, Sept. 26, 2014, has become a symbol of the violence, impunity and broken rule of law that plagues Mexico. By the end of the night, six people were dead, and 43 of the students, last spotted being forced into police trucks, had vanished. Five years on, their whereabouts are still unknown, their cases unsolved.
They are now among the more than 40,000 other people in Mexico who are registered as disappeared, many in the country’s drug war.
This much is known: In one violent and chaotic night, local police officers, working with a criminal gang and the mayor, stopped and shot at the buses carrying the teacher-training students. Later, they fired at others also on their way out of town — taxis, and the soccer team’s bus — though they were not connected to the students. There is still no information about what exactly happened, why, who was involved or even where the students are.
photographed for The New York Times